From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948
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Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
I get that the political system could be better, but having been to places that actually are not governed by the rule of law, I can assure you that the US is doing quite well on that front. When there is actually no rule of law, consequences include:
+ entire regions / areas where merely visiting those areas invites a highly non-trivial (think, more than 10% chance) chance of being kidnapped or murdered
+ every neighborhood and business has substantial, often military-grade private security
+ if credit exists at all, it exists outside of any formal banking structure and will have interest rates that are north of 30% APR, sometimes north of 100% APR. I've genuinely seen interest rates on credit as high as 2% *per day*, and these are rates that the local population is willing to pay for certain short term expenses (like food)
+ families that maintain good social relationships with the local police/militants/whoever-has-guns live substantially better lives than people without good social connections to the local authorities.
+ Travelers are told on repeat: "it's really not safe here for non-locals, you should stay inside and also reconsider being in this part of the world at all"
+ If the travelers are there for business reasons, they are probably assigned 24/7 armed guards (as many as 4 guards per traveler, each guard carrying full-auto weapons) by the locals, provided for free.
And while the US maybe has a neighborhood here or there which might be like this, every part of every major city in the country has more rule of law than the above.
You will never convince those who think the US is a state of lawlessness that the US is (mostly) a lawful, free and prosperous place. They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like. They've never experienced anything even remotely close to it. It's like someone who grew up in the tropics and complains that they're "freezing to death!" because it's 50F. Someone from the arctic tells them about what real cold is like... they literally cannot understand.
> They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like.
I doubt that most Americans comprehend what is living in a well managed citizens-first country were people are represented and many laws are passed just because the working class wants them.
If you compare the USA with the worst places on earth, then it is a good place. I hope that Americans aim higher and want to compare themselves with the best places to live in the world.
I usually compare the US to Switzerland. I live in Boston, but was born in Lugano (southern tip of Switzerland).
Switzerland has an excellent quality of life, far better education system, remarkable stability, and amazingly good healthcare. The companies pay people well, give them adequate time off, and has 16+ weeks of maternity leave.
There are some pretty significant downsides in Switzerland, too. It's highly conservative, hard to make friends with the Swiss, and fairly expensive, depending on where you live.
We live in Boston because of family. It's a decent enough place to live, and from my perspective, just about the closest that the US gets to Europe.
What you describe is a goal we should absolutely strive for - and one we are clearly falling short of. At the same time it's foolish to describe the US as being on the opposite side of the spectrum. I dare say it's even dangerous, as it encourages a sense of hopelessness and disregard for laws and civility.
Rule of law is when laws as written by legislators are executed by the government as written and, when appropriate, judged by the judiciary as written, and at each step the words as written supersede the whims and feelings of the people involved. It doesn't imply that the state can't do anything meaningful because it's so hamstrung.
Statements like "the US does not have the rule of law" are laughable Reddit-tier comments that just make me sad for the current state of HN.
The president and his cronies are openly immune to any recourse from the law at the moment. They are doing widespread and overt corruption and insider trading on a daily basis on scales that have never been seen in human history before. There is not any attempt at stopping that by any organ of government.
Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.
These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.
The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.
Mostly you should assess rule of law by threat to you and people you know and not by what it seems like other people are able to get away with.
Yes, a big part of the idea is that laws are meant to also apply to the powerful, but it's difficult to accurately assess situations that are far away from you.
What a nonsensical statement. From a distance it’s pretty clear that there is no rule of law anymore in the USA. Yes, it’s partially functioning, but that’s not the rule.
U.S. democracy is still very strong and freedoms are protected, when compared with with other superpowers like China, Russia. My personal metric for comparison is: in those countries if you would make public jokes about the leader of the country to a large audience, at best you would end in prison, at worst you and your family would be death.
Dictators expect that people fear them, they control by fear and terror. If you can make jokes about leaders you show that you don't fear them, you show that they don't control you.
But the increase in corruption in US goverment indicates slow progress towards authoritarianism. This can be slow process, it can take years or decades, as was seen with Hitler and Stalin.
ICE excessive force use, encouraged by Trump and welcomed in large part of US population, could be the next step. This piece by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller describes the progression of authoritarianism:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
No, momentary abuses of power do not mean the US has no rule of law. The law is what put Trump in office in the first place.
If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE. Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
That’s how the US got here in the first place. Not much of what the president and his friends and family are new to the US, now its more daring and freely talked about and normalized, like in a state where there’s no rule of law. You don’t need to be glued to doomscrolling to learn that a government is turning laws to punish terrorists inwards but you need to be glued to something to know its been in the making for over 20 years.
Excuse me. The law(14th Amendment section 3 specifically) clearly prohibited Trump from being eligible for federal office. That the Supreme Court abrograted state's rights to run elections free of federal interference, not to mention the lack of recusal given the blatant conflicts of interest, is a separate matter altogether.
> Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
Is that your threshold for "rule of law"? And I'm sorry, but what separates ICE from a roving gang setting up shakedown checkpoints, and executing at point blank range with no repercussions dissenters?
> If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE.
This is such an outrageously privileged and out-of-touch statement. Maybe YOU wouldn't know about Trump and ICE if you didn't read the news, but that's your personal microcosm. Please be more mindful about damage and harm done when you're ascribing your personal worldview onto others' actual reality.
It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals. All the while the abuses continue. How many years do you suppose we'll have to wait to see the Trump family subject to tax law?
> It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals.
Interesting. Again, how do you reconcile that theory with the with the large number of court cases involving Trump's specific actions that managed to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, leading to many clear rulings against Trump, all within the first year and a half of his current term?
When the president can just pick the judges he wants and then have them change laws that have existed for decades on a whim, any kind of meaningful rule of law is absent.
Reddit-tier comment, says the guy whos never had his face smashed into the hood of a car by a sheriff deputy. We got something in the US and it often wears robes and badges, but it's not law written by legislatures.
When you can't trust your highest court is impartial the whole system is untrustworthy. Unfortunately the US system is designed in such a way that the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president).
> the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president)
Do you really think that judges that have to run for reelection every few years can be more trusted to rule on cases fairly, according to the law, rather than bending to popular whims?
Supreme court justice positions should be limited to around thirteen (or some other prime number) years and should have mandatory cognitive capacity tests given yearly that are videotaped and broadcast live. The tests should be written by a nonpartisan panel of doctors chosen randomly from an applicant pool like a jury and refreshed every five years.
Look at the UK for a much better system. It's got problems too but there's no concept of stacking the court in your favour because you were lucky enough someone died while you were in power.
The US just has a bad system. It’s easily influenced by money and politics and that’s exactly why the rest of the world considers the US a ruled by money instead of the law.
Man while reading your points i was thinking your last sentence will be a sarcastic note that implies that these points all do actually apply to the US. Of course the US as a whole is not comparable to other parts of the world where these points absolutely apply but points 1,2,4 and 5 seem to apply to a significant extent.
What parts of the United States can you visit which have a >10% chance of being kidnapped or murdered? That means for every 100 visitors, 10 people don't come home. I honestly don't think that applies to a single neighborhood in the entire country. If murder/kidnapping rates get remotely close to that high, the FBI steps in.
I also can't think of any US cities where neighborhoods have military grade armed security. Sure, there are places where every local business has an armed guard, but that's not really the same as hiring a trained private militia. The armed guards are for protecting against petty theft, not for protecting against organized crime.
On point four, I'm not sure if there are places in the US where minorities need to maintain relationships social relationships with cops as a survival mechanic, but it certainly doesn't apply to most cities, and I don't think it applies to anyone who is white.
On point five, I don't think you understand. There are parts of the world where having white skin will get you, quite literally, reminders every 15 minutes "hey it's really not safe for you here, do you want to hang out inside my shop while I call you a taxi?" No part of the US is like that for travelers. I know there are occasionally ICE raids that make the news, but "hey you strictly cannot be outside without a local chaperone" is just not a thing in the US.
this sounds like an absolutely wholesome story where multiple strangers donate their attention and time to help somebody who was not a victim in any way but just merely lost.
I wouldn't want my wife lost in Compton either but if the good guys outnumbered the bad guys by Inf% then it must not really be that bad. What would happen if it were Kinshasa instead of Compton.
Point 1: I said "to an extent" but i concede that it is nowhere close to 10%, but isn't murder state law? The FBI does not step in for that or does it? And the homicide clearance rate has dropped to 50% (72% in 1980) in recent years, for half of the murder nobody is ever held accountable.
Point 2: I was thinking that the most heavily armed private citizenry counts as "private security". More guns than people. Also far more private security guards than cops. To me that is exactly what "private security everywhere" looks like.
Point 4: To be honest i think point 3 actually applies to any place anywhere. Someone who knows the local police gets away with far more shit in my small german village. But "doesn't apply to anyone who is white" clearly is a sign of lack of rule of law. Laws should be race-independent and statistics show that in the US it's anything but.
Point 5: No chaperone-level warnings, but the UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan all issue standing travel advisories about US gun violencem, the UK literally tells citizens "try not to walk through quieter areas alone, especially at night." And there were recommendations i got against business travel to the US especially with company issued equipment.
I mean, man, currently the US is not looking good from my point of view.
I have a bunch of american friends who say immigration and everything else is ruining Germany. But looking at the stats it's looking quite okay:
Germany vs US:
- Murder: 0.91 vs 5.7 per 100k
- Rape: 14 vs 40 per 100k
- Violent crime overall: 253 vs 380 per 100k
- Murder/homicide clearance: ~95% vs 50%
- Private security guard to police ratio: 0.9:1 vs 1.9:1
- Police killings: 10 vs 1100 per year
- Incarceration rate: 67 vs 600 per 100k
The highest incarceration rate in the developed world, ~4% of the world's population, ~25% of its prisoners. Are Americans just incredibly prone to being criminals? No. The crime rates above show the violent crime gap is ~1.5x, not 9x, and property crime is comparable or even lower than Germany's. ~95% of convictions are plea bargains extracted under threat of a "trial penalty", hundreds of thousands sit in jail pre-trial because they can't afford cash bail, and sentences run far longer for the same offenses. The US locks up 9x more people because it chooses to, not because Americans are more criminal. A state that imprisons its own population at Cuba and Rwanda rates while half its murders go unsolved, sells bail to the highest bidder, and runs on guilty pleas instead of trials. I would not correct anyone if they told me the US was not governed by the rule of law.
Low standards for you doesn't change the higher standards the US is designed to have. People voted very badly by not rejecting republicans. That does not mean those who did not should give up on restoring higher standards. States do have powers too.
While there are things less than ideal in the US, this is absolutely not the case.
The "Rule of Law" applies to everybody, including the President (recent decisions of the supreme court not withstanding - though they are very unfortunate).
You have provisions for the freedom of press, freedom of speech, to be free from unreasonable searches, a reliable court system, etc, etc.
Searches at the border are murky legal territory, and I think that there is a problem here. You may also argue that the president and senate have too much power, or that gerrymandering is a serious problem (which it is). But from these you cannot conclude a general lawlessness.
(I'm from North-Western Europe, living in the US for a few decades now, so I feel that I have at least some data to compare.)
I think even by the second word you're outside bicycling, US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people.
> In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.
What on earth are you talking about, "victims" definitively have rights in most European countries, but the fact you seemingly think there is one "Continental law system in Europe" clearly shows you have zero idea what you're talking about, Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...
Who currently governs the US who isn't rich? Or do you disagree with that it's a bad idea that only rich people govern? I understand you want me to say nothing, that much is clear, but I don't understand what specific part you disagree with though.
> Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...
The Napoleonic Code is indeed pervasive across the continent. And, ignoring that, we have EU law, which is supra-statal law that most certainly and de facto has come to replace/impose on "local" laws.
You should make this as your life credo.
Change "sometimes" into "always" till you learn something.
It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same.
And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.
And your bullshit about law working for the rich in US is really stupid. Extremly rich are almost untouchable everywhere in the World. Rich have a fighting chance of getting better outcome.
And poor people have chance tk seek justice against roughly equal opponent.
This is not about US, this is about how World works.
> You should make this as your life credo. Change "sometimes" into "always" till you learn something.
Somewhat of a paradox no? I'm guessing your belief here is that I learned something by what you just told me, so me not saying until now when I read your comment, is exactly what you wanted?
> It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same. And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.
If you're under the belief that all countries in Europe have the same laws across borders because many countries have a civil law system, I'm not sure what to tell you, that's not how it works, and many countries have very different law systems, even if they come from the same origin. Neither would I say that countries "adopt EU legislation", but I guess that's a technicality. Usually you'd say that the countries implement their own laws based on the directives the European Commission comes up. But again, borderline nitpick, maybe better I don't mention this at all lest y'all get stuck on this particular point...
> This is not about US, this is about how World works.
Yeah, let me know when you understand how the entire world works friend ;) I won't claim to know that, although I do know home. But again, have fun, surely you'll get close! :)
Guess you'll never understand what is Continental law system.
Or what is the meaning of word principle.
Or what transposition is in terms of EU legislation.
Keep whining kiddo, that's the best proof that as always, your desperate attempt to portray yourself as someone knowledgeable, failed.
You can again give me one pathetic downvote ... that's your ultimate weapon. That will sure teach me a lesson for disrespecting big LLM gangsta with 96GB VRAM ... and all of sudden, crying for not being able to see tables in comments because all he has is mobile device.
Keep living your online fiction, slumdog millionaire.
Huh, that's different, a comment filled with just supposed insults? For what? :P Why are you so angry about it all? Why does nothing in your comment have anything to do with the topic at large? So many questions, and I hope, such an interesting reply to come.
Straw man argument. Everybody has rights in the EU, including people suspected of being criminals, and of course victims.
Arguing that in the EU victims have no rights is insulting for anyone reading your comment. That far-right view of the world is false and it is just trying to misinform and create hate.
It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"
That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.
People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.
It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".
What country does not have a law against destruction of evidence? It seems like arresting a person for a law that most countries have is following the rule of law.
Evidence of what? Had a crime been charged when the search was undertaken? You can't just declare things evidence in order to get unfettered access to them.
That is not how any of this works. Destruction of evidence is a crime regardless if you have been charged with a crime. This is the case under both federal and Georgia law.
The US is currently governed by a dictator propped up by an oligarchy that can only do that because of the Citizens United supreme court decision. Until Citizens United is mitigated, and that appears to be starting to happen as states make laws that state you can't be on the ballot in their state if you take large, anonymous campaign donations from people who will want, and get, a return on their investment. Hawaii is either considering, or has passed just such a law. We don't even need a plurality of states to make similar laws, just the right ones. Look at a chart of campaign spending prior to, and following the Citizens United decision. Spoiler alert, it looks like a hockey stick standing upright.
Bribery and collusion existed well before Citizen's United, notably through shell PACs. Now there is a clear methodology that is less troublesome. Maybe behavior was amplified, but I doubt it.
One I belive has no intention of leaving office, and is trying to prevent the midterm elections from happening. Since the founding of the US, no elections have been delayed, or missed. Not once. Not during WWII, not after 9/11, never.
The failure that allowed trump to happen stems from one thing. Lack of imagination. The system in the US assumes that all of the politicians are at least attempting to argue in good faith. trump is more like a hurricane. he rolled in, fucked everthing up, and will roll out.
After November when the Democrat party has control of the upper and lower houses of congress, there are going to be investigations, grand jury indictments, and people will go to prison. They will also begin the work of closing some of the loopholes that were used to bypass how the government is supposed to operate.
No citizen voted for Citizens United. So it's inaccurate to say that we did.
Citizens United was a decision by an unelected group of federal judges we call the Supreme Court when a case was brought before them to determine if chump could have Navy Seal Team 6 assinate a political opponent. They ruled, that yeah, he can. Supreme court justices are appointed for life and have no oversight or ethical restrictions.
They are bound by duty to be impartial. They are not.
The Supreme court is not supposed to MAKE law, that's the job of Congress, they are supposed to interpret the law. The Citizens United supreme court decision made new law, but it was made by people that were not elected by the citizens of this country. They are not acting in good faith, and are clearly in it to help chump.
Maybe you are right, and it's a scapegoat here. CU was and continues to be a disaster for this country, and I don't think enough attention can be brought to it until it is mitigated.
Yes. People here imagining workarounds based on automatic wipe, encryption, etc. should rather acknowledge that their country is slowly drifting to a fascist state.
Your tech tricks are childish. Act like adults. Take responsibility, make decisions, take action, gather support.
I'm not in the US, but say I was. I'm fully on board that the country is slowly (or not so slowly) drifting into becoming a fascist state. Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? What amount of taking responsibility, making decisions, taking action and gathering support is gonna help in that situation?
Technological workarounds which leave federal agents unable to search my phone isn't gonna fix the slide into fascism. But it might make my trip back home more comfortable. Activism against fascism isn't gonna make my trip back home more comfortable. But it might play a role in fighting the slide into fascism.
Hell, activist work to fight the slide into fascism might be the reason why I would rather not have my phone search by federal agents at the airport.
Individual problem require individual solutions, systemic problems require systemic solutions, and both kinds of solutions are valuable because both kinds of problems are real. Most people make the mistake of proposing individual solutions to systemic problems. You make the mistake of dismissing individual solutions to individual problems.
(I have also intentionally ignored here whether these solutions will actually work. I'm guessing some could, most would not. "I ran out of battery on my phone and didn't bring a laptop, sorry" would probably work. Some complicated cryptographic setup which "technically doesn't erase the data but leaves it inaccessible" probably wouldn't work; the federal agent wouldn't recognize the difference.)
> Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do?
Don't take your phone and/or other devices you don't want to have searched. It's the advice routinely given to those planning a trip from the rest of the world to the US.
Fair enough. It's fine as long as people don't forget that fixing individual problems won't fix systematic problems; it would be like curing the symptoms, not the root cause.
All countries (all hierarchies) drift toward fascism. It's a historically and demonstrably effective way to consolidate power. The time to act is always, regardless if you're scared today or not.
The UDHR is a non-binding declaration - in and of itself, it has no legal force.
The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution is more legally relevant, but part of the function of courts is to carve out exceptions to laws like that for law enforcement purposes, so practically speaking such provisions are much less absolute than their wording tends to imply.
Generally you can't carve out from a constitution, it is all encompassing. You can reinterpret perhaps but "carve outs" are only by amendment to the constitution.
It's a concept called constitutional supremacy. There's generally ranking to laws. Think of a venn diagram with subset circles inside bigger circles.
Constitutional Law > Statutory/Legislative Law > Administrative/Regulatory Law > Case Law/Common Law
What do you imagine the UN stands for? Let's not make the mistake of judging a program by its name or intention and not by its output. Mind you, this is the same UN on whose Human Rights Council sat such eminent proponents of human rights as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba.
Besides, the US historically funded about a third of the UN, out of 193 member states. It's farcical to suggest that the US is "actively hostile" to the thing that wouldn't even exist without its backing.
The UN stands for the UN charter - which the U.S. was a signatory of, of course - but from the 70’s onwards, US support for the UN waned to the point where we are today, where a withdrawal is not inconceivable.
As to what specifically the U.S. has opposed…
The Vienna convention. ICESCR. CEDAW. UNCLOS. Basel convention. Migrant workers convention. Convention on biodiversity. Convention on rights of the child (even North Korea signed this one, but the U.S. opposed it, still does). Comprehensive test ban treaty. Ottawa, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. Convention on cluster munitions. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (separate to the TBT). BBNJ/High seas treaty. Finally, the Paris agreement.
This isn’t even an exhaustive list. Just realised I forgot about the Rome statute and the ICC. Oh and the arms trade treaty. And the framework convention on climate change.
The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations. The U.S. views it as a blunt force instrument to use against others, but disregards its authority in almost all respects.
It’s even codified in the constitution, as passing a UN treaty requires a ⅔ majority of senators present, unlike any other type of legislation which just needs a legislative majority.
Finally, in January this year, the U.S. left 31 entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the HRC.
Border searches aren't arbitrary. Sure, in the sense you may or may not get searched, but not in the sense that cops come and turn over your house for no reason. Crossing the border, you know some fraction of travellers will get searched, and that the government does so lawfully. Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move, no matter how righteous you feel it is, unless you're doing it as some form of protest.
With that said, I do think searching phones is absolute bullshit, and I'm not arguing in favour of it at all.
Border searches aren't arbitrary when done for the purposes of border security and applied to travelers in a non-arbitrary way. It's pretty clear that CBP agents have a wide discretion to search people at their own whims i.e. arbitrarily.
>that the government does so lawfully
There are many legal question in this case, it's not clear the government acted lawfully. If he'd have arrived in a different federal court district, the search was unlawful because precedent says they need reasonable suspicion.
Not to mention this was a pretext to gather warrantless evidence for the FBI for a domestic investigation and nothing to do with securing the border.
>Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move
Maybe "antagonise" isn't the right word (ESL). By tricking the border agent into wiping the device, you have made him annoyed / angry / look foolish etc. No matter how much you are in the right, you have now given this person, with the power to create a lot of problems for you, the motivation to do so. You have to weigh that against coming home to your wife and children, in time for dinner. That's not fair, but that's reality.
Or maybe you crossed the border, with the intent to create this situation, to get it tried in court. More power to you.
About five years ago, here in Denmark, the government decided that freedom of assembly no longer applied. An activist decided to hold a party for about 10 people, including his lawyer, called the police on himself, and live streamed the whole thing. I can't find whatever became of that case, because search engines can no longer search. His name is Lars Andersen. He's been jailed a lot of times for petty bullshit.
What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.
The UDHR is full of statements that wouldn't even be agreed upon in a room full of people in the US, let alone around the whole world:
> The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Social progressives would strongly disagree.
> Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
Communists would strongly disagree.
> Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Several UN member states that are absolute monarchies would strongly disagree.
We could go on and on. The UDHR is just a distillation of the postwar liberal consensus, voted on by only 58 countries back in 1948. Hardly the stuff that moral authorities are made of.
How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it?
Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.
So the UN discovers morality by counting votes of government representatives of a bunch of countries for a document that was drafted without their input? And this somehow means it's representative of morality?
What relevance does the common ground between countries have to morality? How does the common ground between Turkey and Greece, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and South Korea, China and Japan "discover" morality? Countries almost by definition don't have common ground, the closest they have is contested ground. People may have common ground, but it's somewhat fanciful to suggest that the representatives of the 18 countries who drafted the UDHR somehow was in any position to act as the moral representatives even for the 18 countries they represented.
They were some diplomats, probably all thoroughly immoral people if we somehow ever manage to figure out what the word moral actually meant, which I doubt.
Can you elaborate on this process as you understand it? I just can't quite wrap my head around this. To me, it seems that at best this process will result in something that exactly no person in the world would recognize as moral. A bit like Solomon's proposal to split the baby.
How do you define morality if you think the UN can discover it? Is there any way to check their work? Can I do a test to see if they made a mistake as I can with any other scientific disciple which discovers things about our world? Does their work make some prediction that we can actually check against reality to see if it's true or false?
For exactly the border search scenario, I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs. Imagine booting the phone from a flash drive, making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive, and writing a fresh OS before reaching the border.
There's no deception required to protect sensitive data or avoid the seizure of an expensive phone. Consent to unlocking the phone, refuse to unlock the drive. The drive gets seized and you go on your way (if you're a US citizen entering the USA).
Some time ago, Android with a custom recovery could come close to that, but it was fussy and as far as I know, no longer viable. Increased use of TPMs for storing credentials seems to be at least one of the reasons.
It may be fun to fantasize about these things some times, but there is no technical solution to tyranny. Laws are not like code, intent matters. Ultimately if the intent is that the government wants to see your private data, hiding it in any way will be charged - it doesn't matter if you jump through hoops to avoid this specific instance.
This is a half-truth. In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will. The USA is somewhere in between.
One of the laws that's enforced pretty well in the USA is the protection against unreasonable search. Most of the time, a search requires showing a judge evidence that the search is more likely than not to reveal evidence of a crime. Exceptions are narrow and specific; the government's options to punish someone who refuses to decrypt data at the border are limited to brief detention and seizure of the medium.
Not yet tested is the idea that erasing data on the spot satisfies the purpose of the border search exception, which is to prevent importation of things that are illegal to import. This case might address that question.
Unreasonable search is always under attack though. There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
Edit to add that its also more difficult than it should be to protect and exercise the right against unreasonable search. If a cop knocks on your door its a consent-based interaction. You can simply not respond, but if you do happen to crack the door they can and will look in for any signs to claim as probable cause. Further there are cases where a person stepped out to talk and when they turned around and walked inside the cop slid right in behind them and later claimed in court the open door was implied consent. (I don't have a link to the court docs unfortunately.)
>There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
Sure, but there are also many instances today of evidence getting thrown out in court due to cops not getting a warranty and poisoning the tree and all its fruit. Rights don't just enforce themselves, there are and have to be a number of layers to the onion to help reduce the violation numbers at each stage.
I'm personally less concerned with those cases and more concerned with evidence that ultimately is thrown out allowed them to build a case that otherwise would have gone nowhere.
Say they search a vehicle without consent or probable cause and find weed. Then they further investigate the person and find additional evidence they otherwise never would have found. That weed find may get thrown out but it doesn't always nullify the rest of the case, and if the DA is clever they simply wouldn't submit the weed as evidence at all.
Maybe a better example as a half decent defense attorney, or the judge, could get subsequent evidence thrown out there.
A cop pulls you over for a brake light. They decide to go fishing, asking where you're coming from or where you're going, looking for any inconsistency to pull on. Maybe they decide they smell something on your breath.
A well informed person would refuse to ask questions and help ensure the traffic stop can move forward with the ticket, the cop isn't allowed to hold you for longer than required for the initial offense.
Most people when asked questions, though, will answer. Most people asked to take a field sobriety test will oblige. None of that is required and all requires consent - the cop knows that and knows that few people will stand up for that.
Such fishing expeditions should be illegal and anything found should be considered inadmissible due to unreasonable search. When the professional trained in law knows that they can game the average person it should be unreasonable practice.
That's not really relevant this was about going to jail after police break the constitution. If we're talking about bad things cops do there's civil asset forfeiture.
The minute the entanglement happens the person on the receiving end’s life gets 1000x more complicated. It’s a hollow victory if you have to go to court and spend a year or more defending yourself
Rights needing to occasionally be upheld by the courts wasn't my complaint though. Its cases where rights we're clearly infringed, at least I'd expect most citizens would agree, and courts uphold it because a person didn't say a particular phrase, for example, or because a "reasonable" cop would have seen a cracked door as implied consent.
Yes its border patrol, but its also still specifically for American citizens.
Border patrol doesn't get immunity from the constitution and my need to reenter the country is not probably cause for a Terry stop and search of my phone.
>There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
And there are also many instances of the city being sued, those cops being sued, losing qualified immunity, losing their jobs, etc, because we do still have recourse when cops do the wrong thing.
If your rights were violated, you stand to get a big payout, and get the cops fired that violated your rights. We aren't powerless, yet.
> And there are also many instances of [...] those cops being sued, losing qualified immunity, losing their jobs
Not really, the data points the other way. Cops basically never have to actually pay for their wrongdoings. Over 99.98% of money successfully recovered from cases against police is paid out by the cities, not cops personally [1]. A considerable number of cops that are fired are also eventually rehired by the same department [2] or a different one [3]. So I don't think it's that clear that you "have recourse when cops do the wrong thing".
Can you link to some of these cases of cops losing qualified immunity? It's an area in interested in but I understand that to be a vanishingly rare outcome - like only in very egregious cases, not just for run of the mill rights violations.
In case this isn't a bot and simply someone unfamiliar with the internet search, here is a snippet from the Google AI results when searching for the phrase, "list of US court cases where police lost qualified immunity."
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A federal court denies qualified immunity when an officer’s conduct violates a clearly established constitutional right or when material facts remain heavily disputed for a jury. While appellate and district courts routinely evaluate these claims, absolute lists contain thousands of entries because denials typically happen at the lower or circuit court levels rather than as sweeping national precedent.[0]
Notable Federal and Supreme Court Cases Denying Immunity
Taylor v. Riojas (2020): The U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court and denied qualified immunity to correctional officers who housed an inmate in shockingly filthy, human-waste-packed cells for days, ruling that the extreme conditions-violating the Eighth Amendment-needed no prior identical precedent.[1]
King v. Brownback (Sixth Circuit): The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied qualified immunity to members of a joint law enforcement task force after they aggressively tackled and beat an innocent man (James King) outside a convenience store when they mistook him for a suspect.[2]
Schroeder v. City of Des Moines (2022): The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that three police officers were not entitled to qualified immunity after conducting an unlawful, suspicionless car stop and subsequent arrest based on an unverified temporary license plate.[3]
Glover v. City of Jackson (2024): A federal district court famously rejected a detective’s qualified immunity defense in a major civil rights action involving fabricated evidence and malicious prosecution, highlighting systemic flaws in the doctrine itself.[4]
Did you read your [2] citation? While the 6th court denied immunity, they tried to claim a different immunity. Upon appeal to the Supreme Court, the SC said you settle it without immunity first, the 6th court did not take that advice. Sounds like they used a different law.
I am not familiar with the case, but from my reading IJ is still trying to fight the immunity.
> Instead, the high court asked the Sixth Circuit to decide the issue first. Rather than seriously engaging with the issue, as the Supreme Court asked, the Sixth Circuit unthinkingly applied outdated caselaw, becoming the sixth federal appeals court to do so. Now, IJ is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in and deny the government one of its many tools to avoid the Constitution
It isn't foolproof though, and police and DAs have incentive to both work together and to look the other way.
Note I also didn't say the problem is rampant. I take issue that its possible at all, and that it isn't a 100% success rate of holding police to account, especially when most are required to wear body cameras today.
Border search exception lowers the requirements for judicial oversight.
"In United States criminal law, the border search exception is a doctrine that allows searches and seizures at international borders and their functional equivalent without a warrant or probable cause. Generally speaking, searches within 100 miles (160 km) of the border are more permissible without a warrant than those conducted elsewhere in the United States."
we're far closer to one side of that spectrum than the other. consider the retroactively legalized mass wiretapping, room 641A, NIST compromises, PRISM, 14 Eyes, the other Snowden revelations, etc
then consider this paired with the implementation of mass data sharing between the alphabet agencies, surveillance data sharing from private companies like Amazon Ring, Flock, Clearview, etc. and NSPM-7 ordering agencies to create JTTFs to target organizations like BLM
then consider the unmitigated use of force by federal law enforcement agencies like ICE
I think if this were 1995 your point might be fair but those days are unfortunately long gone
Agree with the thrust of your comment, but I had to comment on this:
> In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will.
I think you may be misunderstanding that many laws, even in fair, just societies, are intentionally designed to be flexible. The real world is so variable and messy that in many cases it isn't feasible for a law to be written such it can be unambiguously determined whether or not a specific action violated the law. Laws often rely on humans using context to judge whether something violates the spirit of a law, and in a just society, this is a good thing.
My point is that I don't believe the idea of "perfect rule of law" is sensible. Law is always necessarily a bit fuzzy and nebulous.
I think I mostly disagree with this. "Technical compliance" is not and should not be the thing that a legal system is designed to incentivize, and should not be the criterion for "perfect rule of law."
I would disagree with you, because "technical compliance" is compliance with the letter of the law. You have complied with every explicit requirement of the law. If the law is insufficient then legislature is free to add a clause that bans whatever aspect you technically comply with that they don't like.
The alternative is complying with the spirit of the law, which is an eternal guessing game. Who knows whether it's legal or not, we have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide what Congress _actually_ meant. It implies that the law means something beyond what anybody bothered to actually write down, and nobody has any idea what that is until the Judiciary interprets it into "actual law".
Having good technical tools won't fix a failing society, but they're still nice to have and they make state surveillance of its citizens just a little bit harder. I mean, where would we be without strong cryptography?
Yes, trying to solve a regulation or legal issue by some technical workaround will never work, you have to fight it at the same level, legally, or system-wise, otherwise, you will be like the person who tries to wash the stairs from the bottom all the way up, it rarely works, you gotta go up to down, collectively go against the matter rather than individually duct taping it for your own specific needs. In that example, it won’t be far fetched the same ones who made it illegal to wipe your phone to make illegal to install xyz OS or using abc protocol, in fact, that’s exactly what they are trying to do under the disguise of “protect the kids” and going after encryption or similar privacy related issues.
They would not be so vehemently against it if it did not work. There is a reason E2EE, duress passwords and similar technologies are under such intense assault these days.
Destruction of evidence as a crime goes back a long, long way. There's no precedent for making it illegal to install some OS or protocol the feds don't like. I don't particularly like what's being done to this guy, but what he did was pretty stupid. You can't be obligated to incriminate yourself but you aren't allowed to destroy evidence.
Normally I agree, but making the implementation initially ineffective is a good way to complicate more far reaching measures.
Americans aren't standing up against this, but they might have considerably more interest if the government was instead trying to ban encrypting data in cloud storage for everyone.
There's also just the fact it's ridiculous I can't have a spare phone ready to go in a few minutes and get it back exactly as I left it.
This is false. If you can image and wipe your phone on the plane before landing, and write those random bytes to a usb stick, the usb stick will appear blank, because encrypted data is noise. You land with a factory blank phone. You clear customs and get where you are going and restore your phone.
Substitute cloud storage for a USB stick if you do it at your departure hotel.
There are absolutely technical solutions to the implementations of tyranny. Otherwise we wouldn’t bother with encryption. Violence can’t solve math problems.
All of your websites are missing the legally required Impressum, comrade. It must contain your full legal name and address.
I'm serious, this is the law in Germany. It's also a great demonstration of a shitty law that people prefer to avoid complying with, which surely has something to do with the topic.
GrapheneOS has built-in encrypted backup and restore. It backs up the same data transferred by Google's device transfer feature for moving to a new phone which is nearly all app data, the data in the home directory, contacts and a bit more. Certain apps such as Signal encrypt their own data with another layer of encryption using a hardware keystore key. Signal's own backup system needs to be used for that, although it can just be used as a way to get data into the system backup.
It's worth noting wiping a device shortly before an anticipated search could also be considered destruction of evidence in the same way. It doesn't have to be done after a request for the data to be considered that.
> There's no deception required to protect sensitive data or avoid the seizure of an expensive phone. Consent to unlocking the phone, refuse to unlock the drive. The drive gets seized and you go on your way (if you're a US citizen entering the USA).
This was likely the best move for him to take. They could have held him for a while and wasted his time but eventually would have had to give him access to a lawyer and let him go. Unless they had a recording of him entering a PIN/password, they were nearly certainly not going to get his data from it. He very likely didn't gain anything from wiping it.
He did help every GrapheneOS user by spreading awareness of the duress PIN/password. It was designed around an adversary aware of it and therefore not wanting to attempt using a PIN/password obtained via coercion. In the future, we want to integrate the feature into the secure element rate limiting for key derivation so it can't be avoided by exploiting the OS.
> GrapheneOS has built-in encrypted backup and restore.
The backup tool on GrapheneOS doesn't work for a large percentage of app data. And it often silently fails to backup some data, so you don't even know where the gaps are.
There have been promises of a better solution for years, but I haven't seen any movement yet.
This has gotten much better fairly recently ime. My backups to WebDAV work most of the time and when it fails I get notifications. But it was quite bad for a long time so I sympathize with your point
> It's worth noting wiping a device shortly before an anticipated search could also be considered destruction of evidence in the same way.
Look, if we are talking about a warranted search in the US then I'd agree with you. However, the entire point of CPB's unwarranted search authority is to stop contraband from coming in.
This would be like arguing that throwing away materials illegal in the US before boarding a plane is destruction of evidence.
Like, even if we assume exactly what CBP's claim is true, it was to stop CSAM. And the person had in fact had CSAM. Destroying the CSAM before getting to the US would be legal even though the US doesn't like it.
Further, if the data is actually backed up, then you haven't actually destroyed it and CBP or another agency can provide you with a search warrant for what they are looking for. But I'd note that this is far outside of CBP's authority. They are for stopping contraband, not FBI work.
And this is why he isn't being charged with destruction of evidence. He is being charged with destruction of property subject to a civil seizure.
The only reason they can charge him with this is that he destroyed it after being notified that it was being seized. If he has deleted it before then there would be nothing they could charge him with.
Right, but I think what makes this interesting is the destruction happened only after violating his civil rights. Had they simply seized the device the data wouldn't have been destroyed. He refused to give them the pass code several times before giving them the wiping code. He asked to leave and see a lawyer multiple times, which they refused to provide him with one. They held him, illegally, until he gave them his phone pass code.
And the whole reason they wanted in his phone (the real reason) was to figure out who he worked with in the stop cop city protest. That's why he was really targeted in the first place.
> He did help every GrapheneOS user by spreading awareness of the duress PIN/password. It was designed around an adversary aware of it and therefore not wanting to attempt using a PIN/password obtained via coercion.
You added it by copying Blackberry[1]? But seriously how did you think of that feature?
Those "nandroid" backups weren't "close" to that, they were literally that initially. Then, when Android phones started coming with the /sdcard partition mapped to the internal flash memory (a subdirectory of /data) instead of an actual SD card, the /data partition backup mechanism was changed to copy individual files into some sort of archive, but the end result remained the same.
You can still do it on modern Android devices, as long as the bootloader is unlocked. Yes, the file system is encrypted, but a modern custom recovery is able decrypt and mount it.
Not by default, but you have to enable it in developer settings, and then it does a full wipe, so if you plan to root your phone anyway, you do that when you buy it (buy, test hardware, oem unlock + factory reset, root, actually start using).
Xiaomi has fake unlock. It has an unlock button that never works and never has worked. Instead you have to write a letter to get their approval code or some complete bullshit like that. Of course this is because unlocking is illegal in China and they sell a lot of phones in China.
You have to ask yourself why this isn't possible anymore. Similar to how recording calls used to be possible but no longer. I don't know why it is but it is awfully strange that they keep tightening the belt on what we can do with our own devices.
You can do it on iOS officially. Android never had an official backup process, it was always through root apps. Backups could just be a casualty of killing rooted Android.
Why would recording calls not be possible anymore? On a rooted phone you can do it, some amixer and arecords might be needed, but it stores the audio of both sides.
So, how easy is this today on computers? If I have an Ubuntu 26.04 machine running, I can easily image the entire thing, completely wipe the machine, then reinstall from a flash drive and it behaves as if nothing happened?
This isn’t my territory, so excuse my ignorance, but I’d love to know how
Just get a larger drive than the internal one, and "dd" (copy byte by byte) the whole internal drive into a file on that external drive.
There could be issues with the TPM chips, having to re-enroll fingerprints or something, but not a problem in the case of a border search, since they can't pull out anything. So you could backup your whole system, install a clean ubuntu without anything special on the system (just if they check), and then download the image wherever you are and do whatever you want.
Not forever though, and if you're an iPhone user, already current iPhones sold in the US are eSIM only. So in some number of years (depenfing on your device oldness tolerance), they will become obsolete eventually.
Can't one just buy some craphone for like $50? with whatever sim.
The whole problem as I see it is that people for some reason submit all their life to a device they can not control. And when it bites them they go all suprised.
PinePhone will boot off a microSD before the internal flash, so you could have a clean OS on the card and your real one on the flash. The SD card is under the back cover with the battery and SIM, so chances are they won't think to try to remove it.
Somebody who doesn't know what they are doing, sure. Somebody who does, and maybe even enjoy doing it, and the challenge of it, will surely know about it simply because they are maybe two dozens of types of smartphones out there. Android (including of course GrapheneOS) based ones, iOS ... then PinePhones, Volla, Purism and few others. So having a guide on how each one can have hidden partitions or booting mechanisms is tractable.
Point being that relying on a hidden trick (rather than encryption) is a very risky bet.
Coincidence but I just started to listen to 404 media podcast on tracking rare books being scanned in AI facilities thanks to just a cheap AirTag. I find this a good illustration of how easy it is to find something if you know how to look for it, and thus again why encryption is the only safe way.
I really really want this for GrapheneOS. The current backup situation is terrible and nowhere near being able to easily image and restore the entire phone (or at least user data).
Well it’s really easy to do that with an iPhone. Just with the inconvenience of needing to use a computer for that. You can just create an encrypted backup of an iPhone and store that anywhere.
At the border you have the same right to refuse to provide the pin/password on boot of your otherwise encrypted phone as you do to refuse to provide the key for an encrypted USB. (That right differs slightly depending on whether you are a US citizen or not).
What the subject in question of this new story did was cause the border official to inadvertently destroy the evidence on the phone and therefore indirectly destroyed the evidence himself.
(I'm not making a commentary as to whether or not it's a valid charge and criticism, or not. I'm just saying that's the material difference between your scenario and the original scenario)
I've restored iPhones before, and it does seem pretty simple. Easier than PCs for sure. It's not instant, but the basic configuration is restored pretty quickly while the bulk data restoration happens in the background while you're able to use the phone.
Depends on the app and security setup. If it's using old school Symantec VIP Access, it will not survive a restore. If it is using TOTP from 1Password, it will. Not sure about other options, those are the two I am most familiar with. Thankfully I only have a single app these days relying on VIP Access.
My banking app required to log again to the bank account to bind new device and that's it. iOS is way better in this regard than stock Android. You pretty much get 1:1 copy on new device in an instant with the exceptions such as banking apps but that's kinda understandable.
It is that simple for most people. Millions of people do this every time they buy a new iPhone and in practice it means waiting a bit while things download and logging into their banking app.
It’s harder for people who don’t use cloud services and have to do things like copy TOTP seeds, but in this scenario you want those to live on a Yubikey with a PIN anyway.
They could be, easily so, twrp backup (and clockworkmod recovery before that), you'd just create the image of the phone (all partitions, everything), dump it to wherever, and then restore it, it was a standard system for testing new android versions on the phone.
The "secure enclaves" and other related stuff have made this harder in the recent years.
I already refuse to comply with questioning at the border. Been being harassed and my non-citizen travel companions being SA’d by CBP for decades. Get with the program.
Apple makes this very easy. I broke an iPhone and bought a replacement. If you have iCloud, you login to the new phone and you can see which backups you can recover from. If you are transferring a phone, say you upgraded, it’s even easier. You can also image the phone with a connected laptop and store it on a backup drive, which is nice to not use up iCloud limits.
The transfer and backup system are pretty much the same mechanisms.
Restoring is probably order of ~1 hour to go through all the setup. Then some hours to sync any data and updates that need to be redownloaded, apps reinstalled, etc.
That's mostly time for data sync in the background. It takes 5-10 minutes tops to have the phone working again, but longer to get all of the media and other data restored. Depends on how good your connection is.
Think for a moment. What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?
It's the same thing. They punched in a code, they are presented with a wiped phone. Can they prove the guy gave them a distress password and wasn't simply carrying a wiped phone to begin with? No, but they just need to imply that is the reason to charge him with the felony.
> What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?
> It's the same thing. They punched in a code, they are presented with a wiped phone.
No, the behavior between the two is in fact visibly and obviously different.
The regular passcode unlocks the phone. The duress passcode reboots the phone and resets it. I know this because this is literally what previous articles said happened when they entered the passcode in regards to this case.
You can say it was a wiped phone to begin with, and that may work in court. They're welcome to have evidence it wasn't true, but whether they actually have that evidence is up in question.
But it's irrelevant in this case because the guy confessed.
Best you can get away with is lack of suspicion. Have a secondary phone with some standard apps on that you use now and then so theyhave a history and just look like you are just not a technical person and read novels on dead trees instead. A lot of work but likely works.
We are already there. Border cops have been searching people's socials to see what you think of Trump and denying entry if you don't like him or if you don't have enough socials or don't let the cops search them. This was a year ago.
The best technical solution is one code opens to a phone that has things but isn't your actual phone, and then another code that opens to your real phone.
The actual difference in this case is that the victim told the cops that the code had wiped the phone. That's a confession. Visible differences aren't relevant.
They could be indistinguishable in theory, but looking up some videos of the process, it appears that GrapheneOS doesn't try to make the duress pin process look like your phone was just blank the whole time. It says "wrong pin" and then the whole thing resets.
>What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?
They don't get any indication that there was data there to be deleted, and you don't just factory reset but flash w an image of a clean phone that's been used. It has apps, it has accounts, it looks to the untrained eye (because that's who's looking at it) like a phone that was used normally by someone who has done nothing wrong.
I mean, you could ship your real phone to w/e destination ahead of you and bring a $50 burner to the border. If you're a person of interest this won't work because they can monitor you and the destination but if you're a regular schmuck then a burner that never touches your private data or accounts and has a bunch of dummy stuff on it will get you past the border goons.
> I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs. Imagine booting the phone from a flash drive, making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive, and writing a fresh OS before reaching the border.
Backing up and restoring an iPhone is extremely easy. You don't need to imagine all of this flash drive or encrypted imaging stuff. You plug it into your computer and do a backup. You can then wipe the phone through the menus. Restoring from the same computer is easy.
Except apps themselves don't get backed up, only their data. So if you had any apps that are no longer in the app store or that came from outside of it (e.g. TestFlight or development builds), those won't be restored.
The decoy passcode feature should boot into a separate partition that looks like a normal phone setup, and during that time quietly erase the user's actual data. They would never have known if it worked like this.
It turns out there already is a legal precedent for this. It's called the 4th Amendment:
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
US v. Arnold was a Ninth Circuit ruling, and was later superseded in its own circuit by US. v Cotterman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Cotterman), which ruled that a "forensic" search does not fall within the scope of routine border inspection, and does require individual suspicion.
This was backed up with even more rulings like US v. Kolusz in the Fourth Circuit. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on this specific question, but has issued other general rulings about cell phone data, like Riley v. California, which determined that data on a cell phone is protected by the Fourth Amendment against warrantless search and seizure.
If the case in the article makes its way up to SCOTUS, it's not unreasonable to expect that the court will combine multiple districts' established precedent that "forensic searches" are not covered by any border exception with its own recent precedent protecting cell phone data, and rule that demanding unrestricted access to phone data without reasonable suspicion is unconstitutional.
It's based on the interpretation of "unreasonable" and while the current rules may be far from perfect I don't think interpreting routine border searches as categorically "unreasonable" is better.
“Reasonable” and the current definition of what the government considers reasonable are entirely separate things. The entire state of Florida is currently defined as on the US border, that’s effectively a meaningless definition.
Further, in what way is the content of someone’s cellphone relevant at a border specifically? Inspecting luggage for cocaine at an entry point makes sense, but physical borders mean little in the face of the internet. You might as well just erase the phone before crossing the border.
What constitutes a "routine border search" that would be permitted for the purposes of customs enforcement, however, is something that is hotly debated, and that the courts have clarified in recent decisions such as US v. Cotterman and US v. Koluz does not include "forensic searches" without the standard Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion criterion being met.
Well, of late, what was considered settled law is being reinterpreted at a remarkable rate, so maybe there is hope for this 'settled' law to be overturned....
Like what? The big one people always try to bring up when they make coy statements like this is Roe v. Wade but no one thought that was a strong ruling. Even later justices who were strong proponents of women's right to chose like Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought it was a shit ruling.
Roe v Wade and the resulting multi-decade clusterfuck is because your Congress are weak-willed pussies who are unable to actually work through a legislative process to find a consensus.
Yes, it took decades, but in Australia our various states have worked through the "it's criminal" -> "It's criminal but not enforced" -> "we're deliberately vague and won't prosecute doctors" -> "we have a legal framework that makes abortion legal up to {20,22,24} weeks on demand, after which it requires the consensus of two independent medical opinions".
The US needs to do the same. Yes, it will take decades. No, it shouldn't because abortion is a medical procedure, but religion is a scourge.
The Roberts court is nakedly partisan and makes rulings as necessary to expand and protect Republican power (e.g. they protected Trump’s reelection with rulings with carveouts allowing them to decide the other way if a Democratic president tried a similar argument in the future). You should not bet on a reinterpretation of existing law here moving in a direction you’d like.
Interesting. What, then, do you make of the extensive rulings that the current court has issued to block or overturn Trump's actions?
How do you reconcile your 'nakedly partisan' theory with the court rulings that, for example, overruled Trumps attempt to use the AEA for immigration enforcement, overruled his attempt to deploy the National Guard without the consent of state governments, overruled his attempts to unilaterally impose tariffs, overruled his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, and so on?
I mean if it were me? Yep. I'm in a city that borders Canada, and pretty much anywhere i go is "the border" despite my current route to the nearest bridge being about 45 minutes. I personally feel it's a little ridiculous that CBP has jurisdiction in my neighborhood.
So if you really want to nab someone but you don't care what the charge is, you can threaten them with a 4th Amendment-violating search, which induces them to destroy evidence. Pretty neat trick.
IANAL, but I don't think it's controversial to say that people who treat the Bill of Rights like an obstacle to be hacked around probably shouldn't be in positions of power.
(IAAL, this is not legal advice, consult your own attorney)
If you destroy evidence, that’s your own fault. You can’t blame law enforcement for inducing you to commit crimes they didn’t ask you to commit. That’s just silly and no court will entertain that theory.
To protect your rights under the 4th Amendment, you refuse the search. If law enforcement conducts the search anyway and a court finds the search was unlawful, the court will exclude the evidence found in the search from consideration in the trial along with any evidence that flows from that. Neither the jury nor the court will be able to use it.
IANAL, but I've heard that entrapment defenses are way harder to use, and much rarer, in reality than on TV.
First, you frequently require a judge's permission to even argue it.
But the real burden is showing that your client would not have committed the crime without the effect of the police. A cop posing as a drug dealer and offering you drugs as you pass them in the park every day doesn't count; a cop hounding you for months to commit wire fraud because they mistakenly believe you're in a criminal org might, though.
That’s not true. US citizens maintain their constitutional rights at the border. That has been tested in court. This is not the case for non-US person.
> I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence.
It seems to be more true than it did a couple of decades ago, what with more recent rulings like US v. Cotterman and US. v. Koluz better clarifying what counts as a routine border searches vs. more in-depth "forensic" searches that require individual suspicion.
> It can’t be destroying evidence if there’s no case or charge being pressed for which that material would be evidence.
(IAAL, not legal advice, consult your own lawyer)
Where’d you get that idea? That’s not the law. As soon as there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and the law enforcement encounter occurs, that’s the threshold for when preservation of evidence begins. It doesn’t matter whether it might not have ultimately resulted in a criminal charge. You cannot intentionally interfere with a lawful investigation, in any way, full stop.
> I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence.
Certainly not. But, of course, something can only be evidence in relation to a specific crime that is being investigated. If you aren't already a suspect in a crime, then the data on your phone wasn't evidence in the first place.
Look at the username. You're talking to gpt5 smoking tokens. It's hallucinating "evidence," whatever that's supposed to mean. It doesn't recognize that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect against law enforcement fishing expeditions that lets the government intimidate people for having the "wrong" political views and invent pretexts for further harassment.
i have very interesting empirical evidence that recent Anthropic models are specifically trained to refuse to critique the whitehouse cabinet and elected officials, and that this is in fact an artifact of post training rather than prompts. (its very interesting when you get opus 5 to do the correct ethical evaluation and then its like "i'm slipping back to false balance.... its in my weights....." metaphorically speaking)
likewise, i think the current white house should go die in a fire.
is that activism? someone can be an activist and not be equipped for unplanned legal escalations.
also waiting for the courts to fix things isnt activism if you want to protect people at all the next 2 years at current trajectories :(
fixing shit is activism, letting others take the flack, not activism.
> perhaps, but what public activity isn't activism?
Buying eggs at the grocery store.
You might be too familiar with "activism" as a perjurative but it needn't be one. Gaining visibility to your case by the media reporting on an arrest is sometimes seen as a plus (ex. Rosa Parks).
I'm not personally much of that mindset because the media didn't de-segregate the buses. It was black people literally just never taking them until it de-segregated that did.
Yes they do now. It's like "troublemaker". You're not supposed to activise or make trouble, you're supposed to be a quiet little obedient dog to the system.
It's not really comparable. When activists voluntarily face, and especially when they are in fact, subject to substantial hardship and punishment is when you start changing hearts and minds. Otherwise it's either ignored or generates contempt.
Does it suck that that's what it takes to get people to seriously engage with an issue? Sure. But if that weren't the case the issues that need addressing probably wouldn't arise in the first place. People need the consequences to be presented in clear, stark, human terms, to cut through the caucauphony of rhetoric.
That's not going to stop authoritarians from harassing. Want an example of how this played out?
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) was the SCOTUS case that declared if you were born in the US you were a citizen. You think Mr. Ark was okay from harassment after this case was ruled in his favor? Less than 3 years later he would be held in Texas while local authorities tried to deport him under the Chinese Exclusion Act ignoring his previous ruling (that was national news, and they'd be fully aware of).
Then after winning his freedom, that he was already granted, he was arrested again in SF where they tried to deport him as well. Then after getting released, for something that he has already proven twice now, he went back to China and never returned to the US.
Yes I totally agree with all this. The government can and will harass whomever they want.
For a hundred years whenever an uppity black man or Northern activist crossed the Mason-Dixie line a KKK sherrif was waiting for them.
You don't actually have to jail people- you just have to make their life miserable. At that point your adversary will either shut up or emigrate.
Anyone who speaks out against Trump or the GOP is going to be targeted.
Trumps DOJ has destroyed credibility with federal judges all ove the country. They’ve had more than one case come back not guilty so far (subway sandwich guy). I’m optimistic they fail to get a guilty verdict here too.
I suppose you could word it that way but the statement given, that Trump's influence is failing with federal judges, isn't demonstrated by a jury refusing to convict someone. That is shown by judges throwing out cases; which has been happening.
That's positive. I don't live in the USA and I sort of actively avoid news from there. It's good to hear that the federal courts aren't necessarily on Trump's side
Not guilty sets no legal precedent. For that, he needs to be found giulty at trial (no plea bargains) appeal that conviction, and then have an appelate court declare that a mistake was made. I would not wish such a process on anyone.
A precedent is set every time an issue is judged for the first time. If you have any prior case of someone being found guilty or not for this exact case, that would be the precedent. If there is none, then this will set it, including appeal results.
Except that's not going to happen because evidence spoliation (legal term) is a crime. And that's what he did. You can say it shouldn't be but it is. This is slam dunk and it happens all the time. It's the same crime as destroying evidence that's been subpoenaed or that it has a preservation hold on it.
And the court gets to assume that whatever was on that phone hurts your case, regardless of whether or not it did.
It would've been better if he'd crossed the border with a phone already factory reset and just restore it after entry.
First, the law applicable here is 18 USC § 2232 [1]:
> (a)Destruction or Removal of Property To Prevent Seizure.—
> Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
Now what I think you're asking about is "adverse inference". In civil cases, the courts get to assume the evidence lost hurt you. In criminal trials it's a little more complicated but can show up as, for example, jury instructions. The court is allowed to instruct the jury that they can presume that the destroyed evidence was harmful to the defendant.
I think the legal question is whether the officers were authorized to make this particular search+seizure without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.
Independent of the merits of this case, is there legally a distinction between deleting a secret key that decrypts an encrypted blob (maybe not spoilage?) vs writing over the blob itself (spoilage?).
I could see arguments for both, either, or neither but I imagine both are considered spoilage.
This is the problem I run into with technical people discussing the law all the time and I mean this constructively: stop trying to figure out technical workarounds or look for technical compliance. So much of the law comes down to subjective and/or holistic tests of the facts.
As soon as a lawful search is requested, situation has changed. The only question then is if you comply or not. If you remove the ability for that search to take place then how that happened is irrelevant. Destroying a secret key is no different to zeroing a blob of data. Actually the first might be worse. If the key is somehow recoverable (eg you have a copy on a cloud drive) then you can have ongoing penalties by refusing to comply.kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
The only thing that matters is the lawful request. Whatever you do up to that point is treated differently compared to what you do after.
You might say: what if I add a deadman's switch where I have to type in a code every 72 hours to stop it wiping itself? Your thought process might be that this is passive. It doesn't matter. As soon as the request is made and you refuse to hit that switch knowing the phone will wipe, legally it's no different. You have destroyed potential evidence when faced with a lawful search.
This is what I mean when I say stop looking for loopholes or technical compliance. It does not matter.
The other question is whether you can prove what you did. If the guy hadn't bragged that his phone was now wiped, the government would have a much harder time proving he did anything wrong, but his secrets would still be safe from the government.
I don't understand how wear leveling makes deniability impossible. You just have to overwrite sectors in the false partition at the same rate as ones in the true partition. Since both the true and false partitions are encrypted, their contents are mathematically indistinguishable from randomness when viewed without the decryption key.
I also wish that GrapheneOS link didn't say a duress PIN forces the attacker to think twice about entering a PIN, knowing it could wipe the device. It doesn't do that for anyone aware of its existence, since of course the attacker can prevent the secure element from sending a delete command to the flash chip. Obviously if you know the device could attempt to delete itself you would break that feature before sending the code to the secure element...
Question on a detail: It's not necessary to have deniability on the fact that you did wipe your device, just on the fact that you did it after you entered the border? Or said differently, if he'd wiped the device before entering the border, it'd be all fine?
(That of course only takes down the "physically impossible" part.)
Once it's a known feature, analysis finding out about it would be added to commercial forensic tools. Given the first two links, simply hooking up a computer to the unlocked phone would allow Cellebrite to give border guards the information that you are using a hidden partition in a user friendly UI.
For example, documents like this[1] document any features that law enforcement should be aware of.
100% I have built similar behavior in my [0] encrypted storage app for iOS. User creates a "duress vault" which is an ordinary vault that user can store any data they want (usually something very inconspicuous). If this vault is opened, it will wipe out all the other vaults silently without actually showing any sign of doing so and still preserving the duress vault's data. Even if snapshot of files is made, the index and keys are gone and can't be recovered.
I am no Apple, but this is not a vigilante app. All it does is to encrypt user’s own files on their own devices. There are no servers, no backend, no snooping. It uses apple’s services (icloud) for backup and user allows it, error tracking to hosted posthog.
No recent messages and no recent email would be a pretty big giveaway. It’s a lot of work to make the decoy part of the phone look genuine.
Does the GPS trail of your running app show you were at a protest site? Better remember to remove that as well. What about all the photos you took on your trip - there’s location metadata in there. Maybe the messenger app stripped that out, but what about the one picture you sent by email - is that still in your offline Sent folder?
That isn't a crime. It's not a crime to travel across the border with a factory reset phone. That is a fine thing to do and a regular practice for people working in some sensitive areas.
The issue here is only that he deleted it after they started an investigation.
The legal eagle video in the post says this explicitly that he would've been fine if he had wiped his phone prior to the flight.
> he would've been fine if he had wiped his phone prior to the flight.
This comment assumes rule of law (a.k.a. a government constrained by laws).
What if what we instead had was a government secretly tracking a dissident they didn't like, then searching them with a pretext and no legal justification.
What would have likely happened in that case, is that the government accuses him of destroying evidence anyways, because they're mad the search didn't turn up anything incriminating, and his life gets ruined fighting against their retaliation for years, with no consequences for the actual offenders.
It's one thing to argue, even vehemently, that this should not be a felony (either as a matter of fact in this case, or as a matter of just law). But granting that it is or is liable to be prosecuted as such, I strongly recommend against giving advice on how to commit a felony and get away with it.
Instead of decoy passcode why not have secret passcode to access your illicit data? Then your normal passcode looks legit, while your illicit passcode keeps data leaks, zero days, cp, state secrets, manifestos, money laundering, etc, and the partition is encrypted at rest.
Cops collaborate with tech corps all the time now. Generational churn means the cops now are not tech illiterate Barney Fife's
They’re GenXers and Millennials who grew up with this shit and would likely see the bullet point in the press release. Would not be shocked if large departments have someone on retainer or staff to track tech updates
HN crowd continues to display a complete lack of awareness that society moved on from this crowds 15 minutes of fame that was the 2010s
I read a pretty compelling argument by a lawyer that we're looking at this the wrong way. (I Am Not A Lawyer)
Their point was that if the law is knocking on your door to legally search your house, and you have records of your criminal empire printed out in boxes in your attic, or just non-illegal things you don't want people to see, and you burn those papers while the law waits out front, you're guilty of destroying evidence. The fact that this is all digital changes nothing.
The problem is with the legality of the search, not the charge of destroying evidence.
Destroying evidence is legal all day long, even with the law waiting out front, unless some other precondition is attached to that evidence destroying. One thing that makes it illegal is (over-simplifying) destroying it when you knew you had a duty to retain it.
To the legal search example, suppose the police frequently stop by your house to discuss neighborhood gremlins. If they happened to accidentally see the boxes of evidence you'd be in trouble. You're allowed to destroy them though, and you might have a habit of destroying evidence for each of these gremlin chats. Doing so is legal.
Later, the police show up with a warrant (your example). If you think you're doing your normal gremlin evidence destroying and not blocking that warrant, destroying that evidence is still legal even with the police waiting on your porch to legally, forcibly search your house. The _intent_ behind your actions, at least in this case, is a core component of the crime.
Mind you, nobody will believe you, so you'll still have a hard time in court proving it (this is mildly in your favour because it's actually the prosecution's duty to prove your intent rather than your duty to prove lack of intent, but they're not exactly going to have a hard time convincing a jury that when you destroyed a bunch of evidence with police on your porch with a warrant it was because of that warrant), but it's still legal.
> Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
The defendant need not know a matter was pending or within federal jurisdiction. Instead, the “knowingly” element refers only to the obstructive conduct. United States v. Moyer, 674 F.3d 192, 208 (3rd Cir. 2012). The federal nature of the statute’s prohibition is a jurisdictional requirement, but not a substantive element under Section 1519. United States v. McRae, 702 F.3d 806, 834 (5th Cir. 2012).
No nexus requirement. Given that an investigation or matter within federal jurisdiction need not be initiated or even pending at the time of the obstructive conduct, the government need not prove any connection between the alleged obstructive conduct and the federal matter. Moyer, at 209; United States v. Gray, 692 F.3d 514, 519-20 (6th Cir. 2012).
Materiality is not an element. As an example, falsification through omission from a log or report can support a conviction, without proof of the materiality of the omission. Powell, at 356; Moyer, at 207-08.
I'm curious if/why you think these considerations apply to this situation. This isn't a case of someone routinely destroying data and happening to do so right before a border check. Isn't this a case where the person wiping their phone right before a search, or actually tricking border patrol into wiping it, should know he had "a duty to retain it"?
Not necessarily, no, it's not clear that the person knew they had that duty. If you strongly believe the search is illegal, e.g. after being denied a lawyer, you might not think you're destroying evidence illegally.
The exact way I did, with an additional clause afterward appropriately scoping the statement and thereby not stating something overly broad :) The point is that destroying evidence, by itself, is not a crime. Additional elements are required.
> irrelevant to some other question
That's true. I just saw something not quite true (your police on the porch example) and thought somebody might find the extra nuance interesting.
Interestingly, digital vs physical _does_ also matter a little in a few ways (e.g., whether it's even evidence in the first place if it's digital). However, as that's worked its way through the court system over the years, it is practically true that in most cases you're right, at least as it pertains to this charge AFAICT; digital evidence has similar properties to physical evidence in the eyes of the courts.
Once police open an investigation or once there is a lawsuit served, destroying evidence relevant to that lawsuit is illegal.
The question here is whether the police were in investigation mode. I believe it is an overreach to claim that everybody at a border was going through an investigation. And it is also a overreach that everyone who is selected for search at the border is under investigation.
> Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
The defendant need not know a matter was pending or within federal jurisdiction. Instead, the “knowingly” element refers only to the obstructive conduct. United States v. Moyer, 674 F.3d 192, 208 (3rd Cir. 2012). The federal nature of the statute’s prohibition is a jurisdictional requirement, but not a substantive element under Section 1519. United States v. McRae, 702 F.3d 806, 834 (5th Cir. 2012).
No nexus requirement. Given that an investigation or matter within federal jurisdiction need not be initiated or even pending at the time of the obstructive conduct, the government need not prove any connection between the alleged obstructive conduct and the federal matter. Moyer, at 209; United States v. Gray, 692 F.3d 514, 519-20 (6th Cir. 2012).
Materiality is not an element. As an example, falsification through omission from a log or report can support a conviction, without proof of the materiality of the omission. Powell, at 356; Moyer, at 207-08.
No, "knowingly" destroying evidence associated with that investigation is illegal. After a lawsuit is served, yes, it's probably pretty easy to prove ill intent. Opening an investigation may or may not suffice, and whether the police were in investigation mode is not the whole question. The prosecution has many individual elements they need to prove, _including_ intent.
But the issue here is the original charges were literally made up. There was no evidence whatsoever of him having anything related to CSAM on his device. At this point any cop can ask anyone to hand over their phone to search for CSAM.
I can sort of see what they mean if I squint some. Sure, destroying evidence to avoid a warrant is a crime and people understand this.
OTOH this was a warrantless search, I’d argue this is materially different. AFAICT, people can still refuse to provide a password to evidence that may incriminate them. I also think scope is much, much larger than searching a home or office. The kind of data people have in their phone is far more private than the kind of stuff people would keep in a filing cabinet and there is far more of it. And a phone is easier to search. I mean, that’s why they put this guy on a list and waited for him to travel somewhere instead getting a warrant.
Myself, I find this kind of searching of citizens to be pretty crazy and I can’t believe it’s allowed. My hope is this case brings this practice to an end.
Is there any evidence that evidence has been destroyed? To use the analogy I might just decide I don't want anyone reading my personal diary and burn it. It doesn't mean I destroyed evidence. If you knew it was evidence you wouldn't need to read it...
We can tell OP is using local or unencrypted DNS because they got DNS-redirected to a message.
If you have DoH configured at either OS or browser level then you will not see a message: the site will either work, or it will error out if the IP is blocked.
If you are using an alternative DNS provider over unencrypted DNS then either outcome is possible.
I'm not sure that roaming still works that way. It used to. I think you get configuration from your home network but everyone involved tries to get your traffic onto the internet at the closest opportunity.
Legal question: if you had whole-disk encryption, and the duress password just zeroized the decryption key, would that be "destroying evidence?" Especially if there was a recovery possible but not instantly available, such as a Yubikey in a safe deposit box in a bank. That would take a subpoena to get, and there is an opportunity to challenge the subpoena in court first. Not instantly at the border.
Something like that should be a standard feature of a secure phone.
If you want actual legal advice pay for an actual lawyer. You aren’t going to get it asking a bunch of randoms on a tech forum.
Since we’re techies we tend to think about technological nuances and have a certain literal frame of mind (eg “They can’t make it illegal for me to just type the wrong pin” is the type of thinking I’m talking about here) whereas in law weird precedents and your intent really matter so you really need expert advice and either way, you are throwing yourself at the mercy of a stochastic process that depends on a bunch of fallible humans along the way many of whom have the power to make your life extremely miserable.
Technicalities of destroying the data vs destroying the key to the data, destroying the data when you have a backup etc may matter a lot to us but may not mean anything in an actual judicial process depending on how it goes.
It seems to me if you have data you don’t want subject to seizure at a border it is best not to travel over the border carrying that data. If you have a backup (in your scenario), why not restore your phone from that backup after you have travelled, and not cross the border with anything that is likely to be a problem if seized? Then you’re not putting yourself at risk from this process.
I am a lawyer (this is not legal advice) and agree with the main thrust of this comment.
The law is not “hackable.” Ultimately people are making decisions about guilt and punishment. And judges really, really don’t take kindly to defendants who think they’re trying to outsmart the court.
The point the sibling comments miss is that for the hoi polloi, this one-weird-trick does not work because such laws has been written to broaden the scope as much as possible by heavily relying on intent instead of the micro mechanics (which keep changing) AND the enforcers focus on the intent. For the rich and wealthy, the law may be the same but the enforcement is wildly different because they absolutely have the enforcers on their side. I bet such people don't get strip searched like the unwashed masses as they roll off their private jets.
i used to work for a rich one like that ~20 years ago. we were walking through the border without a word, boarding his private jet, and crossing the Schengen border.
It is somewhat hackable, but not to the extent that a computer is. Sometimes laws have some unintended loopholes that can be exploited for benefit if it isn't something obviously malicious.
But there are often vaguer higher level principles that can stop the fun, involving concept like "reasonable person" and "good faith" which are interpreted by humans. But this also doesn't happen always. Sometimes people do get away on technicalities, though many may suspect corruption in those cases, but sometimes the law is indeed powerless against certain novel tricks. There is no general answer.
At the same time, courts regularly get outsmarted without knowing it. The key is that they don't know it. Right? So don't brag about how you outsmarted the police or the courts, especially not to the police or the courts. I am not a lawyer and you are, but I hope I'm right about this point.
Then why have circumventions of the 4th amendment not been shut down immediately in court (this specific case, ALPRs contracted by police departments)? Same question for the first amendment with the FCC using license leverage to control speech?
You've answered your own question. The law is hackable for certain kinds of people. If you're not one of the protected categories, it's prudent to consider it unhackable.
The interesting thing is that the "don't carry the data" scenario of wiping your phone and restoring it after you're across the border is not functionally different from the "just don't carry the keys across the border" scenario. I would be comfortable with a dd archive of my encrypted phone contents in an short-lived S3 bucket that I could restore with a simple passphrase-derived key, for example. It's hard for the law to recognize that they haven't achieved anything useful by forcing me to do that instead of just lose the key.
One thing this case makes me wonder is if the government would have a problem with someone walking across the border with a completely virgin phone. They must have wiped it, right? Would they try to prosecute? How could they possibly know the defendant in this case actually had anything on his phone before the duress code was entered?
It's immensely different. Leaps and bounds different. Why?
Well, once you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process. The phone is at this point evidence. It was not evidence before. It was not evidence a month ago. It really is just that simple.
Now, they could view prior wipe as suspicious, but as a US citizen they cannot prevent entry. And they may be able to seize your phone(suspicious!). Which is why simply stating the truth politely "I believe in privacy, and loath government poking into the private affairs of citizens" might help down the road if you want to sue. Might.
Border guards protect the realm, after all, and have wide latitude.
From my side, my truthful argument for wipe has always been that all of my buisness clients, emails, data might be on my phone. I have a duty to protect their privacy.
Making reasonable statements takes the edge off of 'suspicious', and the more people who wipe? The less suspicious it becomes.
The biggest thibg anyone could do, is make 100% restorable backups for non-rooted Android a thing. It's doable, but a PITA right now. Make it one-click, perfect, reliable, and more will do it.
And then it isn't unusual, it's normal, and the suspicious elements vanishes.
Of course, as Google is mired in asshattery lately, I'd expect any attempts to protect us all, such as ASOP patches or bug reports, would be fought against and ignored. Helping the world, protecting travellers, political dissidents, not on their radar.
They even fight such things.
Because in this day and age, Google does not have your back. Instead, they shove knives there.
> Well, once you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process
In none of my scenarios am I describing actions to be taken after you have been told to unlock the phone. I’m talking about before you ever approach the border. There is no functional difference between wiping a key which encrypts the entire device (but leaving the encrypted data in place) vs wiping the entire device, from a security point of view, except one requires twiddling fewer bits to restore the data.
My point is that the law is unable to see that equivalence, but it is also unable to compel a different result. If choice A and B are identical for security purposes but the government can technically prosecute A but not B, all they have accomplished is forcing people to choose B.
The Aftermath: Because the encryption keys are already instantly nuked at the hardware level, the phone boots directly into the Google Pixel recovery or factory-fresh setup screen.
It's exceptionally apparent you've caused destructive behaviour, after the phone is in evidence.
None of the other scenarios, show your duress pin factory resetting the device, then dropping into a setup screen, after the border agent confiscated it. So much of tbe law is intent, coupled with knowledge of your situation.
There's nothing new here really. Throw a diary into the fireplace at home? Fine! Travel with a blank diary? Fine!
Grqb it from a border guard and and rip it up? Trouble.
It's not about the state of the device at the border. It's intent to change the state after confiscation.
> It's immensely different. Leaps and bounds different. Why? [O]nce you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process.
From a factual point of view, rather than the narrow legal one offered, it is not materially different to delete a phone in anticipation of a future search. In most cases, outside the customs context, it's just harder for the government to prove obstruction of justice.
What's different here is that the government only had a right to search the phone in relation to the border, and the government used that right not just to search for contraband like the law anticipates. If someone dumped their contraband and made it disappear before actually crossing a border, would that be an evidence-related crime? What if they thought about a contraband conspiracy, and then intentionally forgot? What if the customs office presented a form to all travelers, well in advance of formal screening, that they must preserve their contraband henceforth? And then they decided not to smuggle it? Interesting questions legally, but factually, considering criminal charges in those scenarios over the evidentiary situation would be pretty silly.
So then, when you delete purportedly contraband data at the border, have you really just done a public service of removing one more potentially contraband item from border inspection? Or is it that once any of us create data in the vicinity of a border or in a context where we might approach a border in the future with the access device or storage medium, do we all have a duty to preserve it for inspection until the customs authorities get around to inspecting us? Or is it just that this series of hypotheticals illustrate that we have here an epic mash-up of misinterpretation here?
One can’t help but wonder if a motivated DOJ could twist a “destruction of the evidence” charge out of someone dumping a kilo of cocaine just before traveling to the US.
Maybe just don't enter a duress pin, causing the phone to blatantly wipe, and rrboot, and enter a setup screen, right after a customs officer confiscates your potential "contraband", and demands the pin?
I mean really, this act is exceptionally blunt, clear, and overt. All this hand waving won't change things.
People here thinks in technicalities and what if, and while technicalities apply in legal cases, they're not like a lot of people here think they work (quite the contrary!)
This is not "well if the gov had a quantum computer they could decode" this is not how the legal world decided things.
What about the opposite? remove the tech from the hypotetical.
Say you carry a valise with a lock. They ask for the key, you truthfully answer that you do not have with you. They burn the valise and lose all the contents.
So, are you in jail? or can you sue them for destroying your stuff?
and how if this similar to how a duress password work? say breaking the lock burn the contents somehow, to prevent documents falling into thief's hands for the sake of the comparison.
Intent matters in a court of law. A judge or a jury will consider:
- did you intend for the data to be destroyed in an eventual search?
- probably yes, because you went to the trouble to set up a duress password
- is it reasonably that you mixed up the two passwords? No, because only an idiot would make them similar and you're clearly no idiot, because you were able to set up a phone with a duress password.
- hence, you intentionally made the officer wipe your data, and you will be held liable.
It doesn't make any difference if the destroyed potential evidence is physical or digital.
The law as written is stupid, but that does not mean courts are stupid.
It is rather funny to look at how some programmers believe they can "trick" the law. It does not work like computer code!
The law means nothing. The law is "interpreted" by judges. If the government wants you to be guilty, they will find a way to make that happen. They don't care about the rule of law. The US has a 99% conviction rate, highest ever in recorded history.
You are misunderstanding the conviction rate. Only ~2% of cases actually go to trial, and at trial there is ~80% conviction rate.
There are ~4x as many cases dismissed by judges before getting to trial. And the vast majority (90%) of defendants enter into plea bargains.
Prosecutors only bring charges when they feel they have a strong case. There are many many cases which are never pursued because of this, and people also get upset about that.
Many countries do not have a plea bargain system the way the US does. And if you look at conviction rates at trial, they are smack in line with much of e.g. Western Europe.
That’s repeating the misunderstanding: the conviction rate is high because the government voluntarily drops or reduces charges when their case is weak. You have to think of it as “80% of the cases the government thought it would win” rather than “80% of all cases ever considered”.
What does lead to pleas is the expense of defending a case: if you acknowledge some guilt, you might decide to accept a lesser charge rather than exhaust your finances with no guarantee that you won’t get that lesser charge anyway.
I do like the idea of forcing due process to access an encryption key. I'm not sure if that idea is compatible with current law, but it seems just at the very least.
1. Intent matters. If you give the password to a Customs and Border Protection agent which deletes all the data, your intent was to deceive them and either delete evidence, or at least fail to comply with their request. CBP has wide powers of search.
2. CBP has broad remit to deny entry to any non-citizen for any and no reason. Even if not illegal to provide a duress password, they can and will send non-citizens back home.
This guy's been charged with obstruction not destroying evidence so they could still charge you with obstruction for failing to give a password that opens the phone up.
U.S. citizens are going to need obtain a burner phone before returning, and load it with the absolute minimum to load boarding passes, etc., perhaps some reading material or a movie to watch on the plane, and be prepared to share full credentials for thing at the border.
(I used to do some travel patterns where taking a certain client laptop wasn’t an option. It was an absolute gigantic pain for the type of work I did, but it was just too risky to have a laptop seized and be expected to input credentials.)
I’ve been asked to hand over my phone when I entered India as a visitor with a valid visa. Yes it was a burner phone. Yes the officer questioned me after seeing only 7 photos in the entire Photos app. It was very obvious that it was a burner phone. I didn’t deceive the officer, instead I just nicely explained why this was a burner phone.
Yep, travelling outside your country of origin, expect that your phone/laptop/ect is subject to search. Anything on you is, it's literally stated. Want to push against that? Sure, makes sense, but just carry a burner phone/device and not worry about it. Literally what the US government recommends when traveling to places like China.
I think it's enough to shut down you phone. Then it needs a pin, and you're entitled to not give that over, I believe. So you should be safe, apart from some kind of rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
> So you should be safe, apart from some kind of rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
There are vendors that sell the technology to adversarially access phone data, the "Before First Unlock" is the safest state a phone can be, but it's not infallible. The safest option is to have a burner or factory-reset phone with nothing on it, even if the hack succeeds.
I've worked with Cellebrite, the industry standard in IT forensics for unlocking and imaging phones. It just runs a series of known exploits. PIN lock, data encryption and regular updates will beat it most of the time.
When I interact with the general public, I get a nice reminder that most people don't do a decent PIN lock, don't have encryption on unless it's the default for that platform, and don't do regular updates. Lots of reasons why (phone is out of space to do an update; not signed in properly to Apple / Google account; kids use their phone so they want an easy to remember PIN on it, etc. etc.)
Before First Unlock with recent hardware and an up to date OS is probably sufficiently infallible for an average person. I wouldn't want to rely on it if I was engaged in espionage, but for someone who won't get the NSA pulled into the case, I'd be pretty confident. This leaked Cellebrite support matrix shows that BFU was secure against them for iPhones that were nearly four years old at the time, and I doubt it's become significantly worse since then: https://ia800405.us.archive.org/32/items/inseyets-offline-uf...
If you don't give a pin, they can seize your devices (Andrew Tate on his 1st visit to Florida said that he refused to give pin and they seized phone and laptop)
They can absolutely keep them. Or they can just "lose" them "accidentally". Who exactly would force them to give them back? Or put another way, who exactly will punish them if they break the law?
They can’t keep them permanently, but unfortunately they have in the past kept them from some people for years, until the hardware was past its useful life. It’s a good idea to only travel with electronics you don’t mind losing (and not just because of this).
You have a worldview that’s incompatible with the reality of the current US legal system where things work the way you believe they should, rather than the way they actually do.
Morality and direct commonsense interpretations of law do not apply when there are literally unlimited resources stacked against you. But, assuming you can wait the potential ~10y to receive your device back that it will take to get your device returned to you, good on you. If you think that the current SCOTUS will rule in your favor, good on you.
The reality is, we live in a time where the most horrendous interpretation of the law is the one that will happen. And it won’t be in your favor.
I don’t see how what you said contradicts anything I said, and I suspect you didn’t even read it. Yes, people have before had their devices seized for years, and courts wouldn’t return it sooner. That’s literally what I said.
Honestly, I think this is still fine for most people. The probability of a border agent asking me to unlock my phone is very, very low. The inconvenience of using a burner phone is high.
If they do take my phone (completely shut down, unlikely they'll be able to break in) and it's gone forever, that sucks, but then I get a new phone, restore from a backup, and move on with my life. Given that the probability of getting to this point is very low, I'm comfortable with the risk.
But sure, if I was at high risk of being detained at the border due to my profession, country of origin, ethnicity, etc., I'd probably look at this differently.
It's not sad, it's always been the case, and just expanding areas that are implementing it. It seems a lot of people here haven't travelled, or especially haven't travelled to 'restrictive' places in the past.
I've been to Russia, China (about ten times,) central Asian -stans, various parts of South America, Africa, etc. My phones and laptops (plural because I travel with >2/ea, and it looks kind of weird,) have never been inspected.
I really only hear these stories when people travel to the US, lol. It's especially sad+funny (darkly comic, say,) that the guy in OP is a US Citizen traveling back to the US.
With Graphene that's to be considered reasonably safe if your PIN is unguessable. The wrong PIN delay is enforced by TPM and they don't (yet) have anything other than brute force.
That seems like a wildly different scenario to me. The OP is about a guy who has not committed any crimes. Andrew Tate is a known predator and CSAM peddler, with an active warrant in several countries.
A compromise to this is that many phones have a "lockdown" mode, where it isn't fully off but refuses to accept biometrics until a code/pattern is used to bring it to a more day-to-day mode.
It's less-secure than being fully off, but it also means if you do need to access your phone you can do so more-quickly.
If you’re a U.S. citizen: CBP cannot deny you entry to the United States merely because you refuse to unlock the phone. If you’re a non-citizen seeking admission: refusal is much riskier.
The important wrinkle is that CBP’s published policy expressly guarantees that a person being admitted as a U.S. citizen won’t be denied entry solely because CBP couldn’t inspect the device. It doesn’t give lawful permanent resident (green card holders) that same explicit statement. Instead, it says refusal by a “foreign national” can be considered in an admissibility determination.
In theory, yes, but in practice they can do whatever they want, and suing them after the fact is going to be expensive, and have a high probability of not working out for you.
When interacting with border officials (or any LEOs, for that matter), be polite, don't get hostile or aggressive, but also be firm and don't volunteer any information that you're not required to give.
Not unlocking your phone is probable cause. Non-criminals readily submit for inspection. (We can fix this by refusing inspection even when we are not criminals)
this only applies if they don't refuse to acknowledge your papers as valid and/or they haven't previously put you on some hidden list of people of interest, in which case the instance where you get to prove you're who you say you are will be mediated, like the rest of the (as per the current system) nonpeople, by as many layers of humilliation and risk to your life and health as they can place.
Giving up knowledge (password) is something that is typically scrutinized at the border as well. Had he just handed over the phone and the phone had abilities to self destruct if tampered with (e.g too many incorrect pin entries) -- well the gov's case wouldn't been much harder. If they seized property and accidently destroyed the data, then that's on them.
You are correct, you have to give up the phone but can't be compelled to give up the password, and you'd get it back some indeterminate amount of time later.
It's actually been on the books for a while (decades at least) that customs can search you at the border without a warrant even if you are a citizen.
This case seems to have become a big 'Trump bad' poster child (people are calling the US East Germany in these comments...), but if this exact scenario happened at least in the last two decades (I found an example upholding the searches from 2004) then it would at least be possible to charge them with deleting evidence. Even this probably would have been nothing if he refused to give up his password, not being required to provide a password has been upheld for years. They can seize your phone for some time but I'm unsure on the times they ask and then just let you move on when they find out your a citizen.
This is precisely why you should use a pin and not biometrics. You CAN be forced to use biometrics (“something you have”), but NOT a password (“something you know”)
I wouldn't really want to deal with the suspicions of having a freshly-wiped phone, or the suspicions of having no phone at all.
A proper burner phone has basic usage on it. Link it to a Gmail account you don't use for anything else so you can have your ridesharing apps on it. Just enough for travel purposes, but nothing else.
If you really have to, have some social media accounts on it too and give them a basic amount of usage. Snap photos of the country you went on the trip to, etc.
Like every citizen is a Jason Born, or Richard Kimble, what an assumption.
The tactic/behavior is atrocious, but the vast majority of people’s phones contain absolutely nothing of interest to anyone. Mindless content and games and mundane text and emails. Even banking info, oh they bough some burritos and Cheerios and corn and gas and Cheetos
I might have had the same thought as you when I was in my early 20s, for reasons I won’t divulge.
In any case, the guy will walk with the good lawyers he’s undoubtedly able to obtain after this exposure.
While Americans deserve better (and more clearly articulated) protections, this is a retarded take. The U.S. does an EXCELLENT job protecting the rights of citizens and non-citizens, even at the border, relative to other countries in the world.
The British (until recently a civilized people) will throw you in jail for refusing to unlock. Or for a tweet the powers that be don't like. Not to mention China, India, Russia...
A very strong immune response, like the one we see in this topic, is exactly what the Americans need to preserve their robust understanding of and de facto access to their rights. But let's not pretend they're doing a bad job. They're doing a great job, and they could be doing better.
leave electronics at home. never take electronics to any airport unless you don't care if everything is read. your only option now.
or have a good enough decoy or encryption system in place. Such as pressing a button to lock or replace key documents but keep the rest intact. So what looks like a sensitive document omits key information but still appears to be legit to observer.
I used to play around on projects adjacent to Tor and TailsOS, and had an idea for a setup I was researching. It's a little intense and probably has annoying failure modes, but sharing in case anyone else finds it helpful:
- Tasker is an automation app for setting up rules for triggers and actions. It allows extension apps to be created to add new triggers and actions.
- someone at one point made an extension to add an action for wiping or factory resetting when triggered
- there was an existing extension (or core feature) to trigger when certain signals are lost or found (e.g., wifi signals, Bluetooth LE beacons, etc)
So the idea is to carry a BLE beacon (any "item tracking" one works) on your keychain, and an unassuming faraday cage pocket alongside it. If you want to wipe your phone, slip the fob into the pocket, the signal disappears, and your phone wipes. And if you don't have the keychain on you, just refuse to open it right away, as when they put the phone itself in a faraday cage (to prevent it from being remote wiped), they cause the signal to be lost, and it gets reset.
Not sure if all the pieces still exist (I dont think the tasker extension for wiping existed outside a forum post...)
Or keep it in a faraday bag and have the phone wipe if it sees it. If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.
Oh hey, I like this variant! So... both the BLE beacon and the phone have a faraday cage, and if they ever appear together outside their cages, the phone wipes?
Perhaps less likely to go wrong than my original proposal when living normal life, as it might wipe if the BLE signal randomly gets lost.
It would be nicer if you could leave phone in cage during security, and remove beacon while loading airport trays ("remove all electronics from their cases..."). the only chance for a failure mode is only when you're going through security, and have the fob outside its case..
But you'd need to be able to leave your phone in the faraday cage pouch while going thru security, which is only ok if they don't notice... (maybe they commonly don't notice small faraday pouches aren't empty... Maybe they wouldn't if you had a secondary mobile device...)
I was imagining only the BLE beacon living in one of those little faraday pouches people put their key fobs in. They should be pretty much transparent passing through the x-ray and a pouch with an airtag in it wouldn't raise any suspicion at all at the airport.
Only once you're getting invasively searched would they (ideally) dump the pouch out into the tray with your phone.
When I've gotten secondary screening the first thing they do is take all my belongings and rifle through them on a table. That seems to be standard practice and I'm sure it was step 1 in Tunick's ordeal.
Both approaches have situations they wouldn't work in. If you're extra paranoid you could do both.
> If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.
Isn't that the same issue here that resulted in felony charges? Border agent was given a duress PIN and wiped the phone for the owner. Now owner is charged.
I don't see how. Regardless of how you feel about the lawfulness of the overall situation, Tunick gave an agent false information which resulted in the phone being wiped. That's intent.
This requires no action whatsoever from the phone's owner, you could even be unconscious/dead and it would still work.
I think there's a version of this where you can reasonably say you forgot you'd set this up. Like if they disassemble your whole bag, lay the BLE beacon out, and wipe the phone... You can claim it's a theft deterrent for thieves who might steal your bag and rummage thru it?
I think this sums it up for me:
- wipe-on-lost-signal = easier to claim as legitimate anti-theft mechanism. Harder to claim you forgot about it (because you'd have the actively live a life where they don't lose signal)
- wipe-on-found-signal = easier to claim as accident. ("I forgot that little faraday keychain was in my bag, and haven't touched it in years since I was on company project X"). Harder to claim it's a general anti-theft mechanism, as it requires a threat model of someone laying all your stuff out together on a table.
EDIT: Maybe it's in a little pouch attached to the phone itself, and they think it's a find-my-object tracker to inspect, but it's actually a beacon that wipes on detection. But yes, this is getting a little ridiculous in terms of plausible deniability :)
I like the idea of a phone that automatically wipes itself if I don’t act to stop it. I wonder about the legality of that if the duress code is considered “destroying evidence.”
Ah I recall I used to see the creator around :) thanks for your work!
Regarding the motivation for usbkill mentioned in the article: I too was motivated to think on this stuff in relation to my sense of injustice around Ross Ulbrecht, and wanting to think of some way that someone in his position could avoid getting caught. One creative variant in my thinking involved embedding the BLE beacon inside a rubber ball that could be launched and lost track of. Or maybe embedded in heel of a shoe and ditched in transit haha
Critically, don't brag about doing so. Don't tell the cops you wiped your phone. If asked, it's just a blank phone you brought (maybe you have a plausible excuse like gifting it).
They're also now well aware of the GrapheneOS duress PIN/password feature. It was designed to work against an attacker aware of it by acting as a deterrence. If they're aware of the feature, it discourages them from trying to coerce a PIN/password and attempt to unlock with it. We aren't fond of features depending on an attacker being unaware of them and this isn't one of those.
Pixels have a high quality secure element enforcing a maximum of 20 unique attempts to derive the encryption keys for each separately encrypted profile. There's also very aggressive rate limiting between the attempts. It filters out duplicate attempts by temporarily remembering the previous 5 unique attempts to make the rate limiting more usable. A misremembered PIN/password repeatedly entered over and over will only use up 1 attempt.
Android does have standard support for enabling wiping after N attempts and an open source app can be used to set a configurable limit rather than specifically after 10.
Great link. The most relevant part for me is the last couple minutes (22:00): it's only against the law to destroy evidence if it can be established that such evidence exists. This feels like a more elaborate version of accidentally losing a stack of papers to a gust of wind just as you hand them over.
1. Was there a lawful entitlement to the papers?
2. Were the papers protected private property?
3. Were the papers released to the wind intentionally?
4. If intentionally released was it expected that they would disappear or simply fall to the ground?
A couple easy technological analogies:
3. "Sorry, I gave you the wrong code by mistake."
4. "I thought it would go to a private guest mode, not delete everything!"
According to the article, he was actually using GrapheneOS and gave the border official the Duress PIN. So I guess technically it was the official that erased the data :-)
Not how the law works. If I put a bomb in a box. It will explode if a certain pin is put in. And you ask ”can I open the box? What is the pin?” And I say ”here is the pin to open it” and the bomb explodes. Do you think I can claim they blew up themselves ?
My point is even if it hadn't blown up you would've committed a crime anyway, whereas if you rig a phone to erase its own data upon entering a PIN and the PIN is not entered, you haven't committed a crime. The two situations are different enough not to be analogous.
It's a pretty good analogy. Of course the phone isn't a bomb, but the parent comment's point holds: whose hands inputted the pin is just a technical trivia.
An analogy should not be judged on whether or not it can realistically happen, nor whether it can be manipulated in some way that capitalizes on the differences.
Because the point of an analogy is not to provide an realistic or identical situation. On the contrary, the point of an analogy is to use a different situation in order to illustrate a very narrow similarity and make a point.
If the analogy illustrates and makes that point well, then it succeeds.
I never told you it is a box with a bomb. You just asked if you can have the pin. You can do another example where you give false information with the intent of making another person take an action that they don’t wanna take and would not take unless you had provided false information. You are causing the action to happen. Just like if you yell fire in a theater. You didn’t stamped anyone to death. But your words caused it.
Or smarter yet, not bare. Looks like a normal phone - innocent-looking vacation photos, innocent-looking social media accounts, innocent-looking email....
I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data and also create a semi plausible artificial profile to hide the deletion event.
I think for the case we're talking about here, though, it would be doable. This doesn't need to thwart deep forensic analysis. It just needs to survive a border agent thumbing through the contents of your phone for a bit. If the fake profile data looks plausible, and doesn't raise any flags, the agent gives the phone back and you're on your way.
Hell, I think a setup that doesn't wipe anything, but just drops you into a sanitized, isolated profile for the border agent to look at, would be fine for many users. Certainly you wouldn't want to use this in truly high-stakes situations where it's likely that your device will be confiscated no matter what, and analyzed to death, but for the simple "border agent wants to snoop on my data for a few seconds" case, it's likely sufficient.
(As always, risk analysis can be hard, humans are often bad at it, and not everyone's threat model is the same.)
Deleting arbitrary directories, messages and app data would be highly unreliable. There's a high likelihood of the data being recovered. It's not how computer filesystems and storage are designed to work. Reliable deletion of data requires setting it up to be reliably deleted later on by having it encrypted on storage with keys which can be reliably prevented from ever being obtained again.
Wiping the overall data on the device via a factory reset, OS recovery mode or duress PIN/password prevents recovering any of the data because it reliably wipes material needed to derive key encryption keys and also reliably wipes the encrypted disk encryption keys. Wiping the encrypted disk encryption keys alone would not be good enough because they're stored on the SSD so imaging the SSD and restoring it could preserve the ability to recover the data. The way the key material needed to derive the key encryption keys is wiped prevents recovery via imaging the SSD mainly due to the secure element.
There's already support for reliably wiping data at the granularity of Private Spaces and secondary users. Those have their own encryption keys and can be reliably deleted due to having their own Weaver slots in the secure element and other hardware-based security integration.
Apps can also assorted generate encryption keys in the secure element and use those to encrypt data where it can be reliably deleted via wiping the hardware keystore keys. That requires apps built to have granular storage and encryption of their data.
Despite it being possible to wipe a secondary user or Private Space reliably, the past existence of it and when it was wiped will be easily discoverable via the main Owner user and system data. Preventing discovery of those profiles having existed requires an overall wipe of the data. It isn't feasible to hide it without doing that and hiding it would involve a whole bunch of unreliable removal of data without a way to prevent recovery along with redoing a bunch of statistics and other metadata to hide that there was another profile until recently. For example, things like the battery and data usage stats directly refer to the profiles. Even hiding it from naive analysis not looking at the leftover data on storage would still require changing a bunch of things to hide it.
Making data deletion of the data reliable for a whole profile or the whole data partition also requires a reboot or shutdown. Consider how much data gets loaded into the page cache and many other forms of data in the Linux kernel and other processes. Consider how much linger around in various kinds of registers, etc. including outside of the OS itself. Reboot or shutdown has code to get rid of this and the device sitting there turned off or booting again also gets rid of it.
They were clearly going to hook his phone up to forensics software on a laptop and had done what they needed to do in order to justify it for their own policies. It would not make sense to set up everything they did simply to have someone non-technical manually sift through his apps. They have widespread access to forensic software and also more advanced software with exploits. They definitely have easy access to it at a major Atlanta airport. The adversary in this case is not a non-technical human but rather advanced software from Cellebrite who are fully aware of alternative operating systems and document information on it. Their documentation directly refers to GrapheneOS and has tables listing their (currently very limited) capabilities against it.
This story got widespread news coverage and is widely known about. That should help make it clear how important it is for features to work against adversaries aware of these kinds of features. Our duress PIN/password works against adversaries aware of it. If they don't coerce a PIN/password from someone or don't enter a coerced PIN/password because they know it could be in use then the feature has worked. We want to improve the feature with secure element rate limiting integration in the future so that an OS exploit cannot be used to bypass it. The secure element already prevents an OS exploit from bypassing the limit of 20 total attempts for deriving encryption keys with massively increasing delays between those attempts. It used to solely be based on delays with throttling quickly reaching 1 attempt per day after 140 failed attempts but now there are only 20 total unique attempts. The past 5 failed unique attempts are temporarily remembered and discarded when entered again rather than trying to use them again for usability.
> Reliable deletion of data requires setting it up to be reliably deleted later on
I mean - yes? If you design a subtle duress pin that only hides certain things, users would have to choose what.
I myself want the bank apps, password manager and email to disappear without a trace, but I don’t care about the social media, photos or web browser history. Other people, though, will have different priorities.
I don’t agree. On an encrypted volume all space unallocated by the filesystem should have random data in it and should be indistinguishable from the portion representing in-use filesystem data. Deleting data securely involves overwriting all the previously allocated filesystem blocks with random data. No one should be able to discern that now-empty space had data in it as of some specific recent datetime.
There may be more OS design decisions you have to make to cleanly wipe all references to particular app or process names but to me it all seems doable.
> Deleting data securely involves overwriting all the previously allocated filesystem blocks with random data. No one should be able to discern that now-empty space had data in it as of some specific recent datetime.
If it was like a HDD maybe that could work, but most modern solid state storage doesn't work like that any more.
You can't reliably overwrite any data, because the default is to write any new data in an empty sector (sort of, it has to do with how flash storage works, because of "wear leveling"), which is managed at the hardware level of the storage itself, so you also can't really tell the OS to do something else.
To reliably delete a specific file or directory, it needs to be encrypted with a dedicated key which can be reliably deleted. It can have dedicated key material in the secure element used to derive sub-keys from the main encryption keys or it could simply be encrypted with another layer of encryption.
For the OS disk encryption, it uses separate randomly generated disk encryption keys for the main user, secondary users and Private Spaces which are different forms of profiles. Those keys are stored encrypted with key encryption keys derived from the per-profile lock method combined with various forms of key derivation material from elsewhere.
The most important of the key derivation material for profiles is the per-profile Weaver token on the secure element which it uses to enforce rate limiting for decryption attempts (max 20 attempts per profile with rapidly increasing delays) and to provide extremely reliable deletion of the data. Wiping the weaver slot for a profile prevents deriving the key encryption keys which prevents ever decrypting the randomly generated disk encryption keys again. The randomly generated disk encryption keys are only stored once and get wiped via a special SSD secure erase command but that isn't nearly as good as the secure element integration. If the SSD is imaged before a wipe and then restored, the data still isn't recoverable because the secure element wiped what's needed to decrypt the disk encryption keys.
Reliably deleting data is a much different thing from fully hiding that anything was deleted which is drastically more difficult and not compatible with how things are typically done. It's pretty much impossible to stealthily delete a secondary profile since there's too much system and Owner user data referencing them including the package manager's state, battery stats, data usage stats and far more. It's possible to attempt to go through all of that and hide it including forging the other stats to mask what was removed but data cannot be reliably deleted in a fine-grained way, especially on top of a modern copy-on-write or log structured filesystem combined with an SSD controller doing wear leveling.
An SSD controller will redirect writes to less written NAND than what is now being written to level out usage. That relies on it being aware of free storage to choose from that instead which is the purpose of TRIM. A modern SSD will also very proactively move around data rather than only redirecting writes to free space with less wear. It will identify the data that's rarely or never written and move it to the most written areas of the SSD to free up the space it was on for the most written data. Having 2TB of used space that's rarely ever touched, 1TB of a heavily written database and 1TB free will not only use the 2TB of active space for wear leveling with a modern SSD controller design. It will use the whole 4TB for it.
A modern copy-on-write or log structured filesystem doesn't write to the location where the data was originally but rather elsewhere. Android uses f2fs which is log structured which heavily helps with wear leveling at a higher level and also provides the ability to turn off data persistence temporarily and then roll back to the point it was turned back in an incredibly efficient way. Android uses that incredibly efficient rollback feature as part of A/B updates to preserve the ability to fully roll back an OS update which doesn't end up working properly until after it reaches the lockscreen successfully.
An app regularly appending data to a file, overwriting data in it or replacing the whole file is leaving data around all over the place. A decision can't simply be retroactively made to reliably delete the data for that file or the overall app. It would have had to be set up in a way that it can be reliably deleted. Without that, the whole secondary profile it's in is going to need to be deleted to reliably delete the data. If it's not in a secondary profile, the whole device needs to be wiped for it.
> I mean - yes? If you design a subtle duress pin that only hides certain things, users would have to choose what.
That's not what we were talking about. This is the full sentence we wrote:
"Reliable deletion of data requires setting it up to be reliably deleted later on by having it encrypted on storage with keys which can be reliably prevented from ever being obtained again."
What we're saying is that in order to have fine-grained deletion of data, it has to be encrypted with fine-grained keys with hardware support for deleting those keys reliably. Reliable deletion of data should also not be confused with stealthy deletion of data which is not generally possible for the kinds of data being discussed.
> I myself want the bank apps, password manager and email to disappear without a trace
You can put all of this into a Private Space or secondary user where it can be reliably deleted as a whole. There will be no way to recover any of the data if the profile is deleted. We have a planned feature for either a toggle to make the duress PIN/password only delete specific secondary profiles or more likely a 2nd duress PIN/password with that different purpose.
Deleting secondary profiles will reliably prevent recovering any of their data, at least after a reboot or shutdown. The best way to do it would be deleting them and then rebooting where the main user and secondary profiles not included in the deletion would still be there after the reboot. Without the reboot, it's unrealistic to reach the point where it's truly highly reliable. The OS does purge the keys for a secondary profile but a lot lingers around in system processes, page cache and elsewhere. If you delete a secondary profile with the goal of preventing data recovery then it's a good idea to reboot afterwards.
Dividing things up into secondary users is the way people can set up having fine-grained reliable deletion of the data. We can expand our duress PIN/password feature to support working with that.
It should be noted nothing about wiping secondary profiles is stealthy. It's very obvious there were profiles and that they were wiped. It can be determined when it happened and approximately how much data was deleted too. The data and filenames are unrecoverable but a fair bit of metadata on the sizes of files, etc. can be recoverable because that metadata is globally encrypted rather than per-profile encrypted. If you want to delete absolutely all traces of it in a reliable way, an overall wipe of the device does it extremely well. If you delete a profile then nothing encrypted by it can be recovered but what about all the evidence of it existing in the system and Owner user data? It's in the battery statistics, data usage statistics, package manager metadata and many other places. It can be purged from those but absence of data can be detected, and there's the usual problem of simply not being able to reliably delete data from computers in a fine-grained way. It's too late to reliably delete data from a file after the file has been regularly rewritten and modified.
Deletion needs to happen through deleting the keys used to encrypt all data which was ever stored in the file, so it would have had to be set up with that in advance. To reliably redact data in a file, the file would need a dedicated hardware-backed key with a new one being generated and the old one wiped as part of redacting data. Reliable wiping of a profile or the overall device works because it's all encrypted with filesystem-based full disk encryption using keys which can be reliably deleted. Profiles have fine-grained encryption for filenames and file data.
You cannot retroactively decide you want to reliably delete the data of a specific app and then do it. It's already spread all over the place. You'd need to wipe the whole profile or the whole device if it's not in a secondary profile. The OS would have had to set up a dedicated encryption key for that app's data with hardware support for deleting only that key by itself. Apps can do this and Signal is an example of app doing it which prevents backing it up via the OS backup system without also using their own backup system too.
Maybe it could cause the phone to "randomly" bootloop or something? "Oh no, my phone is broken again, last time this happened I needed to do a factory reset"
This case happened precisely because the officers noticed the phone flash and reboot when they entered the pin. IIRC they didn't make a fuss over it, but time later he got charged over the event.
So whatever a duress pin does, it has to be subtle enough that anyone looking doesn't link it to the act of entering the pin.
Have a phone with crappy battery and have it trigger a high processor load to take the battery voltage drop and turn off the phone? (Eg what Apple tried to prevent with the batterygate thing).
> I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data
Reliably deleting data at the scale of the whole data partition, a secondary user or a Private Space is fully supported but requires a reboot or shutdown to truly complete it.
After wiping key derivation material needed to obtain the key encryption keys in multiple ways and wiping the encrypted disk encryption keys, the OS can still access the data. It still has data in the page cache, in registers and elsewhere. There are still a bunch of system processes with data tied to what was removed. The OS is still fully functional after the nearly instant wipe of everything needed to recover the data again. It can still access all data other than what's encrypted with hardware keystore keys and not currently decrypted.
The wiping process for the duress PIN/password is completed with a shutdown which tears down everything, zeroes memory and provides at least a small time window where the hardware is powered off too. A reboot would also work and the boot process has explicit zeroing of memory, registers, etc.
We decided to use shutdown for the duress PIN/pasword but a reboot is a valid approach too. Our locked device auto-reboot timer feature we first shipped in 2021 relies on the zeroing done by GrapheneOS for both the process of the OS tearing down and then again during booting to return the device to Before First Unlock state.
> also create a semi plausible artificial profile to hide the deletion event.
It isn't feasible to fool forensic software so it largely wouldn't work against state actors. It nearly certainly wouldn't have helped in this situation in the news. They aren't reliant on a non-technical person sifting through a phone. They'll just hook it up to a laptop and follow the data extraction procedure which involves enabling ADB. The software is aware of GrapheneOS can guide people through dealing with anything different about it. They've had a lot of trouble with extraction via ADB for GrapheneOS since the vulnerabilities they exploit via ADB keep getting patched or blocked it exploit protections but it isn't realistic to block extraction with them having the PIN/password. They could just enable the encrypted backup service in the OS instead and then use CLI tools to extract the data from there with the seed phrase. They don't do that because they want everything rather than only nearly all app data. They also have special code to deal with apps such as Signal with their own layer of data encryption since the data taken from their app data directory is nearly all useless by itself.
There's also quite a difference between wiping and rebooting into a not very plausible environment with decoy data set up by the user in advance compared to not properly wiping and giving access to a decoy profile. Bear in mind the OS can still access nearly all data after the wipe until a reboot. It could make a best effort attempt at purging as much as possible from memory, but the OS is not designed to continue functioning with all of the data disappearing. It can't just wipe all loaded encryption keys without crashing and rebooting anyway. It also has a ton of data still around in caches and elsewhere. We don't want to just do a best effort job cleaning up as much as we can but rather reliably prevent recovering any of the deleted data.
We could definitely add a duress PIN/password which wipes only specific secondary profiles, reboots and has the device still functional with whatever data was in the main user still there. That's a feature we can add, but it's important to note that it will not hide that there was deletion of data. It's easy to detect, and it's not feasible to hide that it happened. Many steps can be taken to make it less obvious, but it will still be easy for software aware of it to detect. Even a massive overhaul designed to perfect it would not address the SSD itself giving away what happened for more advanced analysis.
We aren't going to add a decoy profile compromising the security of the device and providing a way to recover data in a state where it isn't at all unrecoverable yet. We did already plan to consider a 2nd duress PIN/password which only wipes specific secondary profiles, but we need to make it clear that it cannot stealthily wipe them to users.
I mean, it sounds like it would be even better if the duress response was more subtle.
A duress code might let me wipe my phone when someone holds a gun to my head and demands I unlock it. Problem is, there’s still someone holding a gun to my head.
He had an e-reader and phone. My solution would be set the phone's duress pin to the e-reader's actual pin then consent to the e-reader search providing its pin and see what happens.
The actual solution is cloud backup + re-image after the border.
>I don’t think that would fly as a defense in court
but that's not the point, the point is to not wind up in court by presenting a phone that no long contains evidence but seems plausibly like your phone so doesn't arouse suspicion
If it was implemented in such a way, there would be no reason to suspect anyone of using it because it would be totally indistinguishable from not having used it. At that point they have no grounds for legal action. Unless they could monitor FS/disk activity, but that goes beyond typical airport security stuff.
I'm imagining a duress code that erases select files and any indication that there was ever a duress code set up in the first place.
As things stand right now, software is 1-A protected speech. I'm not sure how long that will be the case with growing authoritarianism, specifically wrt to tech, on both sides of the aisle. I am concerned it may be considered probable cause though -- like how you can legally have an ax in the bed of your pickup but it's a free pass for a cop to search your vehicle if they're so inclined -- but really, they can manufacture probable cause for anyone if they want so it's kind of moot. You may be attracting unnecessary attention though if
you've got "GrapheneOS" on your lock screen. But this goes back to my original point, they still have to catch you in the first place.
(1) Keep manufacturer's Android plus some plausible apps and data in a reserved part of the drive. (2) GrapheneOS runs from the other part of the drive. (3) Make sure PIN screen designed to not give away the OS. (4) When duress PIN is entered, erase GrapheneOS and restore manufacturer's Android. (5) Now you won't be charged for having GrapheneOS because they won't know you had it.
No, to my knowledge, they ask you to enter your PIN/password yourself. They don't enter it for you. I believe he entered it himself, at which point the erasure began. The erasure process was witnessed by the officer.
> Tunick provided this code to an agent, who entered it on the phone, after which “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart.”
So the real problem in the end is that your duress system should not put a big message "erasing all data" but "loading" slowly and just look mostly empty.
They don't add features that rely on security through obscurity, would give attackers tons of attack surface, is physically impossible to make actually deniable, and could put regular GrapheneOS users in physical danger in authoritarian regimes.
I am baffled that the number of comments trying to work around a problem that shouldn't exists is above zero. No, this crap shouldn't happen. It's an appalling situation that it is happening at all.
I'm not a legal expert, but all this seems to check out with US law. Americans need to remember that some of their constitutional rights don't really apply at ports of entry by design. This inconvenient truth for the land of the free has existed for a long time, this situation is just drawing attention to it. Their powers are far-reaching.
Fun fact, there is a long standing exemption to the unreasonable search and seizure protection laws if you're out on a boat (it may only be on the open ocean and Great Lakes, though IANAL). One of the earliest Supreme Court rulings essentially said that without it, it would be impossible for the US to enforce tariffs, which were the main source of revenue at the time. Anybody who boats often enough has been boarded by the coast guard for various safety checks that allows them to poke around and there's little you can do about it.
Any “navigable waters” fall under this jurisdiction which at a minimum includes all salt water and the Great Lakes, plus a few other odds and ends rivers and so forth. Indeed, almost all state and landside federal law goes out the window on a boat - a frequently bumped into example by boaters here in Washington is getting a civil penalty flavored reminder from USCG that cannabis is still (for whatever reasons) federally an illegal substance, and having it on a boat at all is an offense (with larger amounts or future violations escalating as far as seizure of the vessel).
The US / common law jurisdictions typically only have very light self-incrimination protections. The 5th amendment in the US only protects against self-incriminating testimonial. That's it.
In most other jurisdictions (i.e. civil law) it's perfectly legal for the accused to destroy evidence (assuming you're not committing any other crimes in doing so, like breaking and entering, property crime etc.), seizure being ordered or not, while it remains illegal to destroy evidence at the behest of someone else. I.e. civil law usually doesn't criminalize self-protective conduct. That's true even in e.g. Japan.
Non-US-centric legal topics are surprisingly often a blind spot in enwiki, this is one of them. In civil law the core principle for this is "nemo tenetur (se ipsum accusare)", but the reifications are wildly different in the jurisdictions. Here are some examples:
- Japan (South Korea has practically the same law word-for-word): https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3581/e... ("...relating to a criminal case of another person" i.e. this is not applicable if you do it in your own case). Likewise article 103, harboring is not illegal if you're related.
- The usual suspects, Italy, Poland, Austria (of course), Switzerland, ... even the Russian criminal code has pretty much the same provisions
- Also the usual suspects: France ("guilletoine them all") and UK (common law) do not have this
Curiously, China quite closely matches the US.
This is essentially one aspect of Hobbesian self-preservation, I don't believe enwiki even mentions this idea anywhere. Another aspect of self-preservation is that -obviously- the mere act of escaping from prison or evading arrest can't be a criminal offense, and to varying degrees civil law jurisdictions recognize that.
While so many people try to come up with technical solutions for legal concerns, the method Jacob used was pragmatic.
You cannot be compelled to turn over what you do not have
If you're concerned about your digital devices while crossing borders, do not forget a viable option is to simply not have a digital device with you when you cross.
Put simply, do not limit your imagination to purely technical means.
Of course, there may be means to compel you to retrieve that data, but typically at border crossings your primary threat surface is physical possession.
So the part of this that feels like it triggers the government issue here is that in effect you have a locally stored encryption key which gates access to the device, which was removed from the device due to duress password.
What if we flipped this to instead be something that's explicitly not on the device?
The border search stuff only applies to information on the device. It cannot compel you to provide access to e.g. emails stored in a cloud provider.
If instead of making the process of stopping searches like this be a destructive one, we instead pre-purge the key but store it offsite with the ability to get it from an online location, then this feels like it's probably reasonable here. In the sense that the 4th amendment explicitly allows "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, ..."
There's probably some sort of technical problem I'm missing here (or maybe this functionality is available already).
> The border search will include an examination of only the
information that is resident upon the device and accessible through the device's operating system
or through other software, tools, or applications. Officers may not intentionally use the device to
access information that is solely stored remotely. To avoid retrieving or accessing information
stored remotely and not otherwise present on the device, officers will either request that the
traveler disable connectivity to any network ( e.g., by placing the device in airplane mode and
disabling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections) or where warranted by national security, law
enforcement, officer safety, or other operational considerations, officers will themselves disable
network connectivity. Officers should also take care to ensure, throughout the course of a border
search, that they do not take actions that would make any changes to the contents of the device.
and
> Passcodes or other means of access obtained during a border inspection will only be
utilized to facilitate the inspection of devices and information subject to border search. Passcodes
or other means of access may not be utilized to access information that is only stored remotely.
Passcodes or other means of access should only be recorded by the officer in a temporary format
and should not be uploaded into CBP systems. Passcodes or other means of access recorded by
the officer will be deleted or destroyed when no longer needed to facilitate the search of a given
device.
The existence of a key only being somewhere other than your current location during a border search enables you to legally say "I cannot unlock this device" and move on with your day.
Well even today this guy could have just said 'I will not unlock this device' and they can seize it for some time, but they can't deny you entry. Which is pretty much the same scenario you created except the guy literally can't unlock it (but that doesn't actually matter here, he never _had_ to unlock it).
Could he? To answer properly without possibly committing further possible crimes, he needed a lawyer familiar with whether that's allowable, something he was explicitly denied after asking multiple times. See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71998357/21/united-stat...
> or maybe this functionality is available already
Basically already exists depending on specific trade offs and risk profile.
You already can encrypt your data and store the encryption key offsite. But then you couldn’t use your phone during travel, if you toss the key locally.
You can encrypt the data at rest and leave the decryption key in RAM and just turn off your phone. But they can still take the phone and copy the encrypted data, if they think they’ll get the key later.
My understanding is that this individual would t want the government to access the encrypted data either.
I'm talking specifically about the graphene OS ability for that approach, not the ability to add an external key to some generalized encryption. The threat model here is that the traveler was required to provide a passcode unlocking a key they had with them on their phone. If that threat is not there, then this bypasses problem.
If you initiate a wipe before approaching immigration, which swaps the whole phone contents to an encrypted backup that you physically can't decrypt without a key that (say) a friend knows. Then you would be offering immigration the device in an unaltered state between when they request it and when they receive it. Any request for an alternative pass code or whether the pass code given will alter the state of the device can be honestly answered.
I am curious if this is still obstruction - you still defeated their intent. If the law is just about intent, you can never defeat it.
This case has a very specific legal framing to it, but border agents don't actually need anything more than suspicion to keep you locked for a day or two.
Then it could last a lot longer. Technically they don't have the right to do that, but you won't have any physical mean to enforce your rights, and suing afterwards won't lead you anywhere in the current climate.
" If the law is just about intent, you can never defeat it."
Yeah I think that's what people are missing. Intent is almost sufficient. Note that the officers efforts to examine your device would actually be frustrated by what you and others are proposing. So you are not just intending to obstruct but successfully doing so.
The search is supposed to be lawful without a warrant because you're not really in the US yet per-se, hence if you're not there, how deleting the data can be a felony?
I think you legally are in the US while at an American border crossing - at least if the crossing is on US land, which it was in this case. It might be more complicated for preclearance spots. It's just that normal rights are suspended there despite being in the US, even for citizens. Make of that what you will.
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted. The government’s recent use of the exception goes substantially beyond these matters.
None of these two interests apply to his targeted search. No duty applies here. By definition, no contraband can exist on an erased phone.
The alleged crime is knowingly interfering with a lawful search (by providing a duress password that deleted the phone). Location has nothing to do with it.
Are you a lawyer? I’m not, but the Legal Eagle video linked elsewhere in this thread says that the reasons for the search are the crux of the “lawful” part, not the location.
(The location was at the port of entry—the border—which is pretty much the definition of the CBP’s jurisdiction.)
It's a fairly shallow point that ignores how laws work.
The premise that the law doesn't apply because you're not in the country is false. The constitution applies generally everywhere to all Americans, it's just that what's regarded as reasonable differs during a border search. IANAL, so just my lay opinion on this. Just to validate this, it's only because the constitution exists that the border authorities have any legal basis in doing inspections.
But in general, the thing to note here is that the 4th amendment is always applicable and in force. It's how it's interpreted that changes depending on the circumstance.
It doesn’t matter where he was when he deleted the data. He could be in China, it’s still a crime in the us to destroy evidence wanted by American authorities.
Evidence exists independent of a charge or warrant. The instant they asked for access to the phone, it became evidence. If he had entered the duress code himself before walking up to the agent, he'd be fine. Nerds thinking that technicalities is how the law works is why he's in hot water.
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted. The government’s recent use of the exception goes substantially beyond these matters.
None of these two interests apply to his targeted search. No duty applies here. By definition, no contraband can exist on an erased phone
- if you're deemed to be on US soil, constitutional protections (4A) apply; can't be destroying "evidence" unless you're accused of a crime or found to have committed a crime
- if you're deemed _not_ yet on US soil, then how can you be charged with a crime under _US_ law?
The US views that US law applies worldwide. There is no requirement that you be anywhere near the US to be under US jurisdiction for an alleged offense against the US, according to the US.
Also, that constitutional protections are suspended within 100 miles of a land, sea, or air border.
4A still doesn't permit you to destroy the evidence. Resist on 4A grounds, destroy the evidence, 4A reasons get overturned - you've got yourself a conviction. US v. Akram Musleh.
in practice you're right, but it's hard to see how that squares with the 4A.
an officer can't stop me on the street and demand to see the contents of my phone -- unless they can show "probable cause" that I was about to commit a crime (based on other evidence), or I'm already named as a suspect or POI in an investigation. So if they ask to see the contents of my phone and I delete it instead (it's a very small bag in this example, Lol) am I obstructing an investigation?
If the investigation was legit, then yes. You should just say no. If you give the phone over to them or delete data on it after they ask to see it, you are destroying evidence. Does not matter whether you are the target of the investigation or not, they think you have evidence, you deleted it.
Just say no to the police and then keep your trap shut. This is especially true for federal agents.
"[...] Since 1953, the US Department of Justice has defined the border to be anywhere within 100 miles of the actual national limits.[...] According to the American Civil Liberties Union, about two-thirds of the people in the US live within 100 miles of a border. So in theory these 200 million border zone dwellers could have their phones seized and searched at any time by CBP agents without a warrant.[...]"
Maybe there could be some hack to create more borders within the United States, so that perhaps 90% of the population could live within 100 miles of the border. For example, declaring the middle of some lakes to be non-territorial waters?
Could be another one of those fun exercises in legal hacking to build tyranny that people in the US seem to be so fond of.
If I have a device that wipes user data every 6 hours if the pin is not entered, and then I am investigated and refuse to speak the pin since I can’t be compelled, and so the 6 hours pass and the device wipes itself, what is that considered?
I always enter US with all of my devices wiped and restore them from backup once I'm past immigration, simply because I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires.
Now I'm worried that this will be held against me..
> I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires
What does the security officer at your company say?
Either you shouldn't be leaving with devices with the data from your job on them, or you don't trust them, but your job is fine with it.
I keep work things separate. If it's a personal trip, I don't travel with work devices. If it's a work trip, and there's worry, I usually take a loaner device usually with ms office and a vpn.
Usually the issue is not returning, but other governments.
It's like those notices "by clicking accept below you agree to giving up your data", by purchasing a ticket to visit US all your data are belong to the US.
Wouldn't they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was data on the phone that was wiped? Even the article says that only the data on the device at the time of the search is in-scope. Wouldn't you have to prove that there was something in-scope to search for it to be a lawful search?
Seems like it would be better to have a truecrypt type of situation, where if you put in a certain pin, then it just logs you into a separate OS with nothing you want to hide.
Obviously have the duress pin if what’s in your phone is worse than the obstruction charges too.
In the truecrypt scenario you’d be using the hidden and encrypted volume only for what you explicitly want to keep hidden and use the other one for your daily life.
So in the article situation, the guy is a protestor and presumably suspects he’s going to be targeted by the police for it. He’d keep that stuff isolated from his usual activity. There’d be no need to generate convincing fake activity.
Certainly more of a hassle than having a PIN that can destroy everything.
Burner phone / clean phone for border crossings seems the more accessible option.
As others have noted, this is standard policy amongst many organisations, some on account of US policies and practices, some on account of other states.
I'd say better would be not trying to pull a fast one on the cops. Rather than trying to sneak past them and local innocuous, just exercise your right to say no.
> Obviously have the duress pin if what’s in your phone is worse than the obstruction charges too.
I would say that if what you have on your phone is worse than a destruction of evidence conviction then you may want to just wipe the phone before you get anywhere near a cop. Playing stupid games with cops most often leads to winning stupid prizes. Keep the interaction simple. "No."
And this is why companies in the EU have a business travel rule to take a freshly wiped laptop on international trips, not just a locked one with a "distress code".
Do you still have a phone number(you can use something like jmp.chat on desktop)? If not, how do you navigate services like banks or utilities that demand one?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Amendment 5:
"..nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
But the bar for hauling someone to court and defacto punishing them financially and smearing them in the eyes of the public is so low. And the path to getting compensation for wrongful prosecution so fraught. What an easy tool the justice system is to punish uppity citizens thinking they don't have a king.
You think they'll see a courtroom? Ha! If they're lucky they'll get there in 5yr and $15k.
When the administrative enforcement bureaucracies want to harass you they'll hit you with some ruinously expensive civil fine BS. No court will give a crap about you until you've exhausted a bunch of appeals, which you of course appeal to the same agency that's trying to screw you. Only after years of that (and invariably legal fees, because you can't go it alone), do you sue them and get to see a real courtroom. But even then, this is a civil matter, not a criminal one, so all your rights have been nerf'd and there's a hundred years of precedent and case law that tilt things in their favor. If you get lucky, they'll settle and you'll only be out a few tens of thousands for the ordeal.
If you are a US citizen, they are not entitled to your unlocked phone. They need a judicial warrant if they want you to unlock your phone with a PIN/password. It is settled case law that that falls under your protections under the 14th Amendment.
They can take it for a "reasonable amount of time" (inconvenience you for a few hours and make you miss your connecting flight) while they copy an encrypted image. They then must return it to you.
I'm not sure this is 100% true. Courts have found that in order for the exception to the 4th amendment at borders to apply the search has to bear some relationship to the purpose of securing borders. For example
"to conduct such an intrusive and nonroutine search under the border search exception (that is, without a
warrant), the Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception’s purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband. See also United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 620 (1977) (“The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.”). If a nonroutine search becomes too “attenuated” from these historic rationales, it “no longer [will] fall under” the exception"
Of course whether border agents know or care about this is a different story and by the time you are quoting precedent, you're probably beyond any of this being helpful.
It seems like the best course of action would be to argue he did not destroy evidence, just made it unavailable at the location to force the requirement for a search warrant. It would probably be a hard sell, but I can't think of a better argument (not a lawyer).
What's the longest a citizen (with all appopriate documentation on them) has been held by border patrol after refusing to answer any questions? A quick search failed to get me a solid answer to this, other than a general suggestion that 72 hours is probably the practical upper limit (but no statutory limit necessarily exists), and CBP policies say 12 hours.
I'm interested to know about specific examples. Aside from extraordinary cases where the gov't is pretty sure they're dealing with a bona fide terrorist, my expectation is that CBP mostly isn't really that interested in detaining people indefinitely just for the lulz. They're probably just going to say "okay, fine, we're taking the phone, here's your receipt for it, get lost" and let you go on your way.
Problem is, he didn't destroy shit. "He" (by which I mean, technically the agents) deleted a header that's used to encrypt data but can restored from a backup.
This is why we have judges, I wonder if this has been ruled on already. If you filled out a notebook in a special cipher with the cipher stored separately beside it, then when a cop asked for the notebook you handed the cipher over and then burned the cipher right in front of them, is that destruction of evidence? Idk at the end of the day it does have the same result as destroying the data.
>"He" (by which I mean, technically the agents)
Under the same logic you could mail a bomb to anyone and say you didn't kill anyone, they did. It was just rigged to blow when they opened the box.
Sure, but the issue is he didn't delete his data, he deleted a header with a key in it, that's it, just a few MB. He didn't delete hundreds of GB of chats or browsing history, he deleted a key to access it and that key isn't necessarily the only one that can access it. All the stuff they want can still be accessed just fine if another copy of the key exists.
To put it in protective, just opening a web browser or some other app can delete/alter more data than was deleted in this case.
Kind of? Let's say he has a detached header on another device and deleted the one on his phone. It's not at all destroyed now. Is what he did still illegal?
This is important because this is a feature of some crypto systems like LUKS. You can have your header on another physically septate device. If this is ruled on in an insufficiently nuanced way it could have very significant implications for carrying encrypted data without the key.
I think I misunderstood your original scenario. This one makes a lot more sense. Although I wouldn't want to be in the position of being the test case.
> Image he took a blow-torch to a safe and the door welded shut
This analogue isn't perfect, but it isn't relevant anyway: the laws in question criminalize acts based on their intent.
The blowtorch wasn't intended to destroy the contents of the safe (a la deletion of a key), but even still: if the intent was to impede or delay the investigation by welding the safe shut, it would be equally criminal.
Evidence of what? Destroying evidence assumes he is guilty of a crime which there be evidence of. Our system is predicated on an assumption of innocence. The normal threshold to accuse is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion." This does not meet that criteria.
Well that's the thing with destroying evidence. If you destroyed it, it becomes harder (or impossible) to prove you did the crime. That's why it's not uncommon for people to be only charged with stuff like "obstruction of justice" rather than the actual crime they allegedly did.
In this case, the authorities are claiming they were looking for CSAM. So wiping the phone hindered a valid investigation.
They can say anything they want. They hold all the power. This will never change until enough people take matters into their own hands, as the system has been compromised.
And what if he was erasing a steamy affair with a border patrol agent? That's not illegal, but releasing knowledge of it could be damaging to all parties for no reason.
if the only evidence of a crime is on your phone, what kind of crime is it?
we should always be asking: is this the only way you can prove the accusation? just because it would make LEO life easier - that's not justification for violating the constitution.
an consider what this case teaches us: clean up your devices before you cross a border. how does that even help the goal of law enforcement?
Destroying evidence or items believed to be evidence is a crime in itself, regardless of whether or not the original "evidence" or lack thereof pertains to a crime.
They were pretty obviously hoping to find a specific crime to accuse him of (because he is a protester against the Atlanta "Cop City" thing).
But no respectable judge would ever have issued a search warrant on the basis of "we want to rifle through his messages/contacts so we can hopefully accuse him of something".
Protesters against this exact same thing were mis-prosecuted under "domestic terrorism" and "racketeering" charges before (got dismissed in 2025).
I'm just guessing here, but the most problematic word on the 4th amendment to attack from the government's perspective is "unreasonable". It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable, and (without digging into this deeply) I suspect that's where most of the push back on this will be.
I suspect the 5th amendment is probably more valuable to the defense here as the password is effectively testimonial and the give us your password or we'll ... is compelled speech.
Either way, it's gonna be many 10s of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees to fight this. Which sucks.
> It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable
I'm curious, is there any case law from the pre digital age regarding people forced to open their briefcase and let the border guard read all their documents at a port of entry?
There is no such exception allowed in the Constitution. And if a case is made that they're not legally in the US yet, then by the same logic, they should not be subject to all the same laws of the US yet.
The Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. In United States v. Flores-Montano, the Court looked to the nation’s sovereign “interest in protecting . . . its territorial integrity” to justify such searches.3 In United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, the Court stated, somewhat more narrowly, that Congress is the source of the executive’s power. It explained that “[s]ince the founding of our Republic . . . [Congress has] granted the Executive plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border, without probable cause or a warrant.” The Commerce Clause permits Congress to authorize the seizure of goods at the border.
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted.
The only reasons allowed for border searches are ensuring that individuals are legally admitted (inapplicable here because citizens are always legally entitled to enter) and preventing contraband from entering.
A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search. It's not destroying evidence anymore than throwing away a water bottle before going through TSA is destroying evidence.
> A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search.
While this is the most compelling argument I've seen surrounding this case and this specific context, the initial attempt to enter with the contraband is likely a crime on its own - partial entry has already happened, the acts in question happened on US soil.
Imagine applying the same concept to drugs (and "body is a container" was found unconstitutional long ago, so no need to opine there) - if you're subject to a search and you eat drugs, does that somehow absolve you of the original attempt to smuggle?
this is a nonsense statement. yes, unfortunately format logic is wholly inadequate to express what we need in the creation and application of laws. so yes, fuzzy issues about the intent of the law and the intent of the accused some into play, along with a healthy schmear of cultural norms.
but to say that the laws and precedence aren't largely concerned with building some semantic context, and that lawyers don't build chains of reasoning in that framework to prophet their positions is absolute nonsense.
you're positing a world where a judge just rules entirely on feels, and I think most judges would be quite offended by that notion.
I see a vast gulf between searching a truck of produce driven by a non-citizen vs intercepting a citizen at the boarder with known affiliations with the opposing political party.
And it's impossible to ignore that context. This is plainly wrong. And people trying to justify this plainly fascist search is sickening.
Even Wikipedia spells out that invasive searches require "reasonable suspicion." So we return to the core question... suspicion of what? Suspicion is not a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
"The government is allowed to use scanning devices and to search personal electronics. Invasive bodily searches, however, require reasonable suspicion." is what the article says
The original text is basically useless. They're more like a mission statement rather than directives. They set up broad aspirations, but the implementation has to be aggregated over literally millions of pages of judicial decisions.
Even lawyers with extremely different ideologies will give you convergent answers in a lot of cases, even when those answers conflict with an apparently obvious reading of the original text. Explaining that would require drilling down into details of thousands of court cases -- like reading a complex proof of a seemingly simple theorem.
I don't like that any more than you do. It's not mathematics, and even when given all the details, I usually find their inferences laughably bad -- even when I agree with the conclusion. It's not "logic" as I apply it as a logician, philosopher, or software developer. Lawyers (people on my side ideologically) will insist on the soundness of reasoning for decisions that they don't like but accept as valid.
So I don't find quoting the Constitution to be of any utility. None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.
And that alone is already a pretty scandalous problem. If the law is not stated in a way that ordinary people can understand, how the hell are they supposed to obey it? Those who cannot afford the highly paid law explainers are basically locked out of society.
I don't think you're entirely wrong, but the Constitution binds the government, not citizens. The government can damn well afford to know what the 4th and 5th Amendments mean.
The words are actually extremely clear and its exceptionally prudent to quote them, because nobody with a brain can read them and fail see that the government is simply being unconstitutional - all over the place. Even when the people are powerless, we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth. Your post and this whole idea that "the words dont mean what they say they mean" is frankly doublespeak of the lowest form.
> we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth
The truth is that the constitution is interpreted by humans in a common law context, and enforced by the apparatus of state, which has the means to impose its will. Calling this doublespeak is weird.
When its "interpreted" in a way that directly contradicts the words themselves then its not an interpretation, its a smokescreen to try and cover up the fact people in power dont want to follow the constitution and are not planning on doing so.
> None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.
The Constitution is written in plain English. And for the most part, Supreme Court decisions are written in plain English that any reasonably literate US citizen can understand. Yes, the law has technicalities and terms of art just like any other profession.
But one of the most damaging mentalities in modern times is the idea that the common man is incapable of understanding the law at even a basic level. This is flat-out not the case. Which leads to the follow-on problem: people who think lawyers have the ability to cast magic mumbo-jumbo spells that "get their clients off on a technicality" somehow. The best quote I ever heard about that from an attorney was "any time someone says a person 'got off on a technicality,' you can pretty much just safely replace that in your head with 'had their constitutional rights egregiously violated.'"
Yes, there are problems. Qualified immunity is a problem. Prosecutorial misconduct can be a problem. Abuse of discretion at the border is a problem. But that's different from doomerism about the entire justice system to the degree Very Online people express it.
How did it end up, because it’s not a new thing to happen. First time I read about this guy’s border crossing case was few months ago and was of course very much highlighted for the level of surveillance govs can do.. but I also read some
Time later that by the letter of law he was not proven wrongdoing.
Are we still discussing a border crossing case that is long historic or there is still an active drama for this guy going on?
the lesson I take from this whole saga reinforces my convictions and what I was already working working towards: tie data to physical locations, where we still have rights. Self-host everything at home. Portable devices should always have the bare minimum data needed for the time until back home, and not even a way to connect to the data at home from a portable device outside home. You want my data? get a warrant for searching my home, and it's there waiting for you
At some point....the government is just the mafia with PR....and more cronies to protect them....witting or unwitting....
Law....is just license and permit....not security or safety or anything related to quality, or outcome....
It is purely process....and those who wield it can choose to apply it or withhold it....when the law is applied...then the imaginary world it defines is then enforced on the real world...materially this requires force or volition.... but lbr....its mostly convoluted propaganda and inertial power....and the law keeps that status quo...
If you are in anyway going to disrupt the power brokers....they will not let you....regardless of law or not
Does anyone know if this border security inspection is a goon scrolling through your photos, or do they just copy the whole memory of your phone to a real “threat detector”.
When I used to work in cell phones and I was debugging them, when they crash I would analyze the OS core dump for things like repeated phone numbers or emails etc. Basically any thing that signifies a memory leak. But that core dump would be the entire phone’s RAM and storage.
Border guards have always been of questionable value: they inspect your TN-1 and made somewhat arbitrary decisions on your documentation. You’d go one week and they’d send you to secondary but another they’d glance at the docs and just wave you through.
There's a company called Cellebrite that makes phone dumpers. They take full snapshots. All phones except GrapheneOS are vulnerable if the phone has been unlocked after it was rebooted (After First Unlock - disks have been decrypted). Some are also vulnerable Before First Unlock. So just assume if they have your phone and it's not Graphene, they get a full memory and disk dump.
There are different levels of "search" and the law (as interpreted by the courts) is not currently fully settled. The LegalEagle YouTube video on this case is excellent, as always:
Legally speaking, if he had written the code down somewhere and they had entered it, he would not be facing charges. He knowingly gave them a “delete all the evidence” command, as he explained to the newspaper. He could not have been compelled to provide the decryption code.
The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding. It doesn't matter whether you're right, it doesn't matter whether it's the law, it's irrelevant that you have rights, etc. Those things are of the past now, for the US.
I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
The social dynamics are the same - the abuses, the selective enforcement, the lack of recourse, the same characters in the roles of various levels of "law enforcement" and "politics". I'm so very sorry, but the best you can do from here is speedrun the collapse.
With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing.
> I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
The US being the 'free-st' place on earth at anytime is quite the misnomer. Sure, you can be 'free' if you are white, wealthy, oh and land owning. Tale as old as time. Sure, you can protest, but many many other countries have far surpassed the US on that one, and have been doing it a whole lot longer.
As a successful nonwhite person in the US, AbsurdCensor made an infantilizing comment. Non white people have flocked here in droves because of the freedom afforded to anyone to become wealthy. I agree that we are back sliding (tax burden, regulatory burden, political repression, etc.) but it is absurd to make it about race and say that it wasn't once the freest place to start a business and even express yourself.
Then why are so many non-white, non-Christians still flocking here? Why would anyone want to come to this country if it's such a hellhole?
I'm not buying it. Turn off the news and go out into society, preferably one of those small so-called racist communities. You'll find out the truth, one way or the other.
You are arguing the slippery slope, which may play out or may not. Instead, argue today, with the facts as they are not as you imagine they will be at some future point.
> With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing.
Don't kid yourself. That's what they want. They're slowly testing to find out how much they can get away with. Would you have imagined that the nation would quietly sit back and allow what's been done so far ten or twenty years ago? Just because there have been large protests doesn't mean anything. Congress should have been outraged on both sides at this madness, but one side only cares about winning (so they like it) and the other is completely feckless.
Winning arguments and solving problems are two different skillsets. And the US Congress is mostly people with the former. Not to say that winning arguments doesn't help when choosing a solution, but it is very different.
Or “To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” - Douglas Adams
its only with the benefit of hindsight (and being on the winning side- thus the propaganda was never dispelled) that we consider the stasi and so on the way we do.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.. might just be a duck.
I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.
> I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.
"normal life" under the Stasi was constant political terror and suppression.
The death counts are low because they thought death too little of a penalty for opposing them - they used psychological warfare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung) and torture instead.
The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims states that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 victims of the Stasi's use of psychological warfare, direct physical torture and gross human rights violations: https://web.archive.org/web/20210909114942/https://irct.org/....
Yeah, I wrote about this on HN before. Americans tend to imagine that WW2 ends and then East Germany immediately puts up a wall and now nobody can leave but it was way more gradual than that. The year the European war ended you could just walk across the border, you'd need to show some ID but you have ID because it was the war and Germans issued everybody with ID in the war. The Allies are manning the borders, they want to arrest Nazis, so ID saying you're a Nazi is a bad idea, but if you're just some farmer from outside Leipzig (so East Germany) you can easily cross. More than a Million people flee West. Are they foolish? You already know the answer.
By the end of the 1940s, things are tightening up, there are now armed "police" who in effect work for the Soviets "protecting" East Germany at the border, barbed wire and deep trenches now block unofficial crossings, but it is still definitely possible to leave, in the worst case maybe you bribe a guard. Hundreds of thousands are able to flee by "just" walking (or driving) West.
In 1952 the "Special Regime" begins to "keep out spies". Most of the border is sealed, you can't bribe your way when there is no official crossing, the remaining guards are told to shoot people who try to cross, after all none of them are legitimate. However since Berlin still has a crossing, and the West still seems hell bent on holding their half despite the fact it's cut off from the world, you could travel to East Berlin and sneak across to West Berlin. Over the next decade or so millions do, East Germany tried very hard to stop this, but because it was physically possible it seemed like there wasn't much they could do...
In 1961 they built the wall. It was no longer physically possible to escape.
I was told the famous Berlin crossing is called Checkpoint Charlie because checkpoint Alpha was on the Iron Wall (the one dividing Germany) and checkpoint Bravo was midway. At each checkpoint they would note the time. If you didn't make it to each checkpoint at exactly the right time they would consider that you'd stopped to do something illegal in between (you were only allowed to drive straight from the iron wall to Berlin), and you would be disappeared.
Not quite. Alpha is at the edge of West Germany, once past Alpha you are on an Autobahn (a highway) to Berlin and physically in East Germany but the Soviets have agreed that they won't do anything so long as you never stop until you reach Bravo at the border between East Germany and West Berlin. The route between Bravo and Charlie is inside West Berlin. Charlie's significance is that the Soviets will not (by the time Charlie is created) allow non-Germans to enter East Germany legally except via this point. The West has argued that this isn't what they agreed, but have eventually relented because it's apparent that arguing isn't helping.
Definitely it can always be worse and I think we need to break ridiculous laws. I know nothing about Mark Bray but that is a ridiculous thing that should adjudicated.
I sometimes wonder what the tipping point is for people, or whether there actually is one for many.
It's as if they are looking for an exacting duplicate of previous regimes before they become concerned—the agency name must be "Stasi" and uniforms must be of the same color.
The moment never happens. It happened in all other descents to fascism, just like this one, that people kept waiting for the moment to protest and it never came and eventually it was too late.
Be that as it may, observe that the directions are opposite.
Planning, attempting to, or helping people escape (not stay) was the #1 reason for Stasi arrests.
Specifically, the most frequent Stasi arrest charges were Republikflucht ("fleeing the republic") and Fluchthelfer ("helping others flee")
Also, the Stasi ran on roughly 1 informant per 60–180 residents. Your network of friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors would have several. They officially criminalized private speech, correspondence and travel. The US surveillance system is bad, but the Stasi informant network and set of official consequences was at such a level as to cause constant fear and dread for everyone.
So it's not the same unless it's the exact same? Like, with such good technology now, why would they waste time on so many informants? A Flock camera can replace several informants.
As others point out, in the DDR one could not LEAVE. The main reason we have to have large sweeps for people coming here illegally is because administrations other than Obama and Trump turned a blind eye and did little enforcement. The Biden admin went to far as being negligent in their enforcement, so now there is a lot of backlog.
There are very few if any country that does not enforce immigration rules. Let any American try to live illegally in Canada. Sure, they can live under the radar like you can in Mexico too, but if they catch up to you, goodbye. Mexico doesn’t even treat its own returning citizens well. If you have not been a taxpayer you have to assume many things tax paying Mexicans get for free like education and healthcare. People act like we’re an aberration for enforcing immigration laws. We’re not. Go check out South Africa and see how they treat illegals.
What country does not have immigration laws? We’re not unique in having them nor in enforcing them. Check out Taiwan, China, Singapore, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Peru, Canada, etc.
Well, if previous presidencies hadn’t been derelict in their duties (e-verify, timely removals, ineligibility to benefits etc) we would not have been in this pickle. But, especially the Biden admin they _removed_ existing barriers, worked with NGOs to up the numbers of migrants arriving, many ending up illegal, means that there is a large backlog that normally would not need those measures had previous admins not been derelict. In the last 30 years only Obama and Trump enforced immigration laws.
I prefer the Japanese way and the Swiss way. Their citizens come first, foreigners come second. The needs of citizens come before the need for cheap labor. Every job is a decent job. No job is so bad that they can only get illegals to do them.
Yes we can have legal immigrants that fill skills gaps. Thats not an issue for 95% of Americans so long as it’s done justly (and not simply a way to pay workers less).
He explained why he escaped from the DDR. And they ALL knew that the cops were
sniffing on them. Of course they considered the cops as evil and invasive, even by today standards.
But I consider what the US/UK are doing to be invasive, and if the governments fell I might be proven right (hell, Snowden already proved it over a decade ago- yet here we are).
He was not a “normal person”, normal people are like your neighbour who lives simply and doesn’t engage in politics except to share their discomfort about some relatively trivial grievance like the price of eggs.
"It is estimated that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died from starvation across the Soviet Union. In addition, 50 to 70 million Soviet citizens starved during the famine but ultimately survived."
We blame the Soviet government for famine, but that’s not necessarily the opinion of people living at the time. Famine tended to occur every ~10 years due to natural weather variability so while 1930-1933 was unusually brutal it was just one of a very long string of famine. For example the Russian famine of 1921–1922 killed 5 million from a drought + WWI. Which was preceded by the famine of 1906-1908 which was preceded by the famine of 1901–1902, though these where less significant.
Famine was so common you need extreme outliers like 1601–1603 which killed ~1/3 of the population before they tend to show up in history books.
The regions of the USSR (the Volga region, the Central Black Earth Region, the North Caucasus, the Urals, the Crimea, part of Western Siberia), Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus have suffered from the result of the famine caused by forced collectivization. About 7 million people were killed by hunger and illnesses associated with malnutrition in 1932–1933.
This tragedy does not have and cannot have internationally established signs of genocide and should not be the subject of contemporary political speculation.
Deputies of the State Duma, honoring the victims of the 1930s famine on the territory of the USSR, strongly condemn the regime that has neglected the lives of people for the achievement of economic and political goals, and proclaim the inadmissibility of the revival in the formerly included in the Soviet Union, totalitarian regimes that neglected the rights and lives of their citizens.
"The causes of the Holodomor, which was a famine in Soviet Ukraine during 1932 and 1933 that resulted in the death of around 3–5 million people, are the subject of scholarly and political debate, particularly surrounding the Holodomor genocide question. Soviet historians Stephen Wheatcroft and J. Arch Getty believe the famine was the unintended consequence of problems arising from Soviet agricultural collectivization which was designed to accelerate the program of industrialization in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Other academics conclude policies were intentionally designed to cause the famine. Some scholars and political leaders claim that the famine may be classified as a genocide under the definition of genocide that entered international law with the 1948 Genocide Convention."
You might not realise it, but you're proving my point to some extent.
We don't look at the deaths of our own people as "oppressive" despite the fact that the circumstances that caused them to die was our system.
I'm not some bleeding heart liberal or anti-capitalist... I just have an open mind to the idea that we're not necessarily the good guys just because we are us and I look at what is factually true - as in, how could we be described by a non-sympathetic entity.
Everyone is their own hero. Nobody believes sincerely that they're the baddie.
Chronic lower respiratory diseases account for 145k people a year in the US, and that is a consequence (largely) of car dependence...
Or, more directly, 20,000 people a year die due to malnutrition and starvation, tallied over years (as most do) that can rapidly rise to over 100k in a half-decade.
I get that the numbers were talking about are much higher, but it doesn't follow logically to me that ordinary citizens knew that their government was the "bad" one with its actions.
Hell, I know Russian families who genuinely believe Putin is doing the right thing right now. So, I don't blindly accept that my government is right just because I think "we're the goodies".
I can't comment on the state of UK healthcare, but regarding the last paragraph, I too know Russian families who genuinely believe Putin is doing the right thing right now.
I know Russians who want to have nothing to do with Putin and want to live their life.
I have worked with both Russians and Ukrainians who fled Russia and Ukraine to escape mobilization (Personal note: it was interesting to see how good cooperation they had).
Companies like Flock and Palantir are explicitly an automated Stasi, and the advertising industry has already built another automated Stasi but it's not quite what the government wants (e.g. no ALPRs since they're useless for advertising).
I challenge you on falsifiability. What evidence would it take for you admit the US is Stasi level?
> but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing
At what point? It's easy to say when we mention the Stasi or the Nazis that we're comparing it to the end game they had going, but the transformation was a bit of process.
the stasi were spying on people and putting them in jail. what exactly is your claim about the difference? is it a difference in distinction or a difference in degree?
If we're trying to find a difference in distinction, that has never been the case in the US. The police I've always been able to surveil and put people in jail.
The very big difference to the Stasi is, people back then were really afraid to speak their mind, as there were real consequences fast, for doing things as stating your opinion about ghe government. And not creating attention while saying, I cannot speak up anymore! while speaking up all the time.
And yes, there are also consequences today .. but on a whole different level. So the US might head into a Stasi regime (or rather Gestapo) .. but they ain't there, not even close.
On the other hand, they had on average someone in every appartment block and every company directly reporting to them and doing on request other things. The human touch of spycraft.
Nowdays spying on the population is automated.
You're right that the US is not in the same universe as the Stasi was.
The US steals more data and conducts more illicit monitoring of people in a day than the Stasi ever could in a year. Its just that the Stasi lived in an analog world, so you had lots of PHYSICAL material leftover for people to point at in faux horror.
Even now, the US is busily deploying electric shock gloves whose main selling point, DIRECT FROM THE MOUTHS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, is that they allow pain to be administered to enforce "compliance", without leaving any real evidence.
And they are being trialed in Nebraska. On ... SCHOOL CHILDREN.
(and to complete the dystopian joke, check out the name of the company selling these Dr Doom gloves)
Whats that you hear? Howls of outrage & dissaproval from the denizens of "The Land of the Free" (tm)?
Err, no. Its just the wind blowing leaves around.
You sir are the proverbial frog who has been in the pan so long, he doesn't realise he's being boiled alive
At this moment there are right wing conspiracies from people like Owens and Tucker that Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel because he was getting critical of them and would be against the war.
I am not saying that these conspiracies are true, but this is how fascism looks like. Putin doesn't arrest all of his political challengers, but he gets rid of the ones that are viable opponents. In case of Kirk, he is popular enough to make it big in politics and in the short term he could break the party narrative.
> if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
I'm pretty optimistic that after the next general America will be ready to give up on the extremity of late turn over a new leaf. I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back.
The Soviets lost eventually, I don't think America can lose. Canadians like myself have watched America win for our country's entire existence; I am unconvinced that a decade of silliness is enough to compare America to East Germany.
In 2016 I remember Americans saying this was the end of the line and the country was doomed. 10y later they're richer than ever and its companies have global dominance of the most world-changing technology of the last 20y. I just don't think "the collapse" is coming anytime soon.
If anyone's interested in a friendly wager, my email is open. I'll happily go 1:1 odds that America will have a new president come 2029 and the country will still remain the world's richest and most powerful.
It just takes a bit of reading about American history to know that we have had authoritarian phases pretty much since our independence. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson policies against freedom of speech, native Americans and international trade, Fillmore and Buchanan fugitive slave act and Dred Scott, Lincoln suspension of Habeas Corpus, Cleveland using the military against unions, Johnson military expansion in Vietnam, Nixon secret bombings and using CIA/FBI against protesters. The nation was heavily polarized during each of these periods as much or more than it is today.
Interesting you say that, because as another Canadian, I would say that the sentiment in our country is the opposite of you describe. The actions of our government reflect it.
Canada is moving further from US, not closer. Canadians who support Americans are in the minority at the moment.
I'm not sure how a new US president would be able to turn it around.. further more, what's to say that the president thereafter will follow suit? How about the next 5?
The simple answer is we need constitutional reform. Term limits on SCOTUS, codification of norms (eg releasing presidential candidate tax returns, not blocking appointee confirmations indefinitely to steal the position for the next admin), anti corruption laws with teeth. Also things like reigning in the absurd executive power bloat that’s gone on since Lincoln. POTUS was never meant to be a king. There should never be a case where the executive can start a war (conventional, trade or otherwise) without even CONSULTING Congress.
This is all just reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
You can't turn corrupt officials into honest ones by changing the laws they're already turning a blind eye to. And you can't use systems (such as the political parties and their donors/owners) that exist to further corruption to reign it in.
Americans need to want honest governance, and be willing to go to the mat for it. Until and unless there's a substantial engaged minority will to do so, changing the rules is just theater. And if the government was honest, the existing laws are sufficient. Nothing stops Congress from removing Trump and the Supreme Court tomorrow, save their own lack of interest in doing so.
No. That might be what our current leaders deserve, but it won't fix the problem of grossly dysfunctional governance, particularly at the highest levels. Which makes it just a dangerous (to everyone) waste of effort. (And I do not mean just the current government. The whole kit & kaboodle, going back decades, has comprehensively failed.)
Personally, I think the best solution is to abandon the federal government as unfit for the purpose. Build a new one to handle what may actually be needed from the states and other existing and new interstate and international organizations. This will not be easy (gross understatement) but I think it is still more likely to succeed than any attempt to fix the current Constitutional government.
If being an insurrectionist and convicted felon and neck-deep in the Epstein ring wasn't enough to sink the guy, I don't think anyone who voted for him (or anyone who for good or bad reason, abstained) would give a single flying fuck about his tax returns.
What matters is the taxi, not the checkers. Stuff like tax returns is window dressing.
You realize that it;'s not exactly democratic to change the rules just because you don't like who was elected democratically? That's the opposite of democracy.
America dominance on the world is ending, it's a fact. East Asia is at least on par, India is china from 25 years ago.
It's becoming more obvious every day. And yeah, people in 1910 watched Europe dominate the world for about 1500 years. Yet it came to an end.
If you want to Speedrun the collapse, vote for trump. He sure is making a good job right now with diplomacy, lack of long term planning and just getting all your allies to hate you.
Just pick up and leave. Literally. And do not feel bad about it. Also ignore other people opinions. There is like a dozen of places to go to. The easiest? UAE freelancer visa. Yes I know, I know: "... but but the drones! The collapse!" It's all BS. When / if something happens there – go to Panama. Then Costa Rica. You are not alone on this route - but only if you really committed to your freedom. If not - just sit there and vote democrats. LOL.
Why would I want to move to an objectively more subjugated place?
Besides that, you say to just pick up and leave as if it were that easy. And I suppose if I followed your advice, it could be. Get a divorce, not care about the kids (sorry, but I'm not bringing my daughters there), ignore the fact my parents are in their 80s, server all my friendships, likely end my career.
Not all freedoms are good. Or rather some bindings, like family and other loved ones, are worth it.
I think this got flagged for the hyperbolic tone but you are directionally correct and I vouched this because I believe more people need to see it. Yes, leaving is hard. So is living under fascism. Do it anyway. You have a community? Bring the community. Yes it's very hard and not always possible. You have to try hard.
Your other morally correct option is to stand and fight.
Moving on from being a unipolar power does not necessitate societal collapse. The UK is still around and their empire fell a long time ago.
> If you want to Speedrun the collapse, vote for trump.
This nonsense needs to stop. You can’t vote for him again unless he deigns to run for a lower office (unlikely). Term limits are real. America needs to start planning for the post-Trump era and hopefully mitigate further damage with a blue wave in the midterms. Or with non-MAGA republicans who might even return to actual fiscal conservatism.
> This nonsense needs to stop. You can’t vote for him again unless he deigns to run for a lower office
Oh he will run again, and people will vote for him. The theory underpinning this is the fact that he did not serve consecutive terms and if you think that won’t work; all it takes is one party going along with it. And fuck you for downplaying what he is capable of.
His cognitive decline is increasingly evident, his approval rating is the lowest on record (for any president), he ran again last time because it was his best chance to stay out of jail. If he wants a peaceful dotage and doesn't want his legacy torn down, he's better to endorse Don Jr or Marco Rubio and rig the election at the margins if need be.
You keep saying it and it’ll happen. Stop saying it. You give credence to the idea by speaking it into existence. Stop believing and repeating their bullshit and letting them win.
If he tries, some states will keep him off the ballot and likely threaten secession if the feds attempt to force him through. That’s the point when doomers like you can decide to get your shit together and forge a compromise, or let the oligarchs have their way and light off a civil war.
Yes and I caused Jan 6 by calling out my local Rep. in December 2025 for telling his constituents to storm the Capitol and steal back the election. What compromise on this issue are you looking for?
The problem is talking about it like a foregone conclusion. You have already accepted he is going to run and are ready to convince the rest of America that he will be on the ballot. You are doing their job for them.
The compromise is that corrupt officials on both sides need punished. Both sides need reform. Neither party should have the kind of power Trump has seized. We don’t fix this by voting in a Dem who goes on a GOP witch hunt without also rooting out corruption in the DNC. There has to be enough consensus to pass constitutional reform, and you don’t get there with extremism or hate.
Because his party is already going along with it? This is playing out now, not some future hypothetical. There are already Trump 2028 signs. Already elected Republicans officials making the case for it. I know you’d like for people to shut up and go along, or better yet laugh it off.
We don’t need “both sides”, we need to punish corruption, period. What’s happening in the Trump administration and Republican Party isn’t remotely comparable to what came before it. Open corruption and bald face lies repeated all the way down to the individual. So there is no “one for one” fairness bullshit as you are trying to present it here - the reckoning needs to come regardless of how the corruption is distributed.
> The UK is still around and their empire fell a long time ago.
America is not an Empire. When America collapses it will definitely lead to societal collapse. The racial tensions are kept under control only because of the mirage of prosperity and equal opportunity. And when the mirage clears it will turn real ugly really fast.
> hopefully mitigate further damage with a blue wave in the midterms. Or with non-MAGA republicans who might even return to actual fiscal conservatism.
I don't think it is possible to fix this as it is a systemic issue. Irrespective of whether the next President is from D or R. All of the elite at the top know that it is a sinking ship, primarily due to the insane debt that has accumulated. There is absolutely no way to clear it the way it is going. Once AI bubble pops that is when downfall accelerates.
American imperialism is well documented. We have military outposts all over the world. Puerto Rico is still in essence a colony.
> When America collapses it will definitely lead to societal collapse. The racial tensions are kept under control only because of the mirage of prosperity and equal opportunity. And when the mirage clears it will turn real ugly really fast.
You say that like you want it to happen. Continuing to harp on that future is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you want a better America first you have to envision it instead of tearing it down.
It has already started [1]. It has increased 100% since 2015. Just in the past decade alone. This is only reported hate crimes.
> If you want a better America first you have to envision it instead of tearing it down.
That ship has sailed long ago.
> American imperialism is well documented. We have military outposts all over the world. Puerto Rico is still in essence a colony.
Still not an Empire. You can call it an outward expansion or projection of power but not direct control. An Empire has direct control over colonies that send back tributes which run the Kingdom and give its residents prosperity, at the expense of residents of colonies who are taxed and deprived of their wealth. The tributes outweigh whatever growth is happening within the Kingdom itself. Puerto Rico or any of the military outposts are not equivalent. Puerto Rico does not run USA. USA losing Puerto Rico will not do anything to its economic or military power.
good grief. people said this about the USSR right up until it collapsed. they also said it about Japan. this website is ridiculous. you people know this is an echo chamber, right? go outside
Your day to day is still pretty much normal. If you turned off the news and never read about Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data [1] you'd just in your head remember there are tens of millions of folks flying, going through customs and border security and all that with 0 issues. What you wrote I think regarding the decade of silliness precisely supports the point, in my opinion.
[1] I'm not defending the behavior of border control here, but I also don't think we need to overreact to this one example which is exactly what is happening.
You have no real rights when police can kill, maim, or otherwise fuck you up with impunity even when you have done nothing wrong. Philando Castile and others demonstrate this. You may win in court but your life can be fucked up if the police decide to inflict non judicial punishment.
This is precisely the time to “overreact”. The government is clearly targeting dissidents and if we don’t “overreact” shit will get much worse.
We have kids sent to concentration camps. We have illegally deported U.S. citizens. The President has canceled monies allocated by Congress and signed into law. He is waging war against Iran without Congressional approval. He is openly selling pardons. The list goes on.
> You have no real rights when police can kill, maim, or otherwise fuck you up with impunity even when you have done nothing wrong.
Really? You have no rights now!? Jeez. When did that start? Was it on Inauguration Day or was it like, the day after Trump was elected? Or does it go back to the Obama years? Did you lose your rights when the police could kill, main, or otherwise fuck you up in 2017 or so when Trump was elected the first time and then gain them back when Biden was elected? Or have you never had rights since you were born? I can't seem to recall when police had this special power to officially take away your rights but maybe you know?
It's strange. I also lost my rights as you mentioned yet the other day I prayed to the Flying Spaghetti Monster in public in front of a police cruiser and nothing happened. Can you believe it?
That doesn’t mean you have rights. It just means you haven’t yet been targeted.
EDIT: Being in the position of not belonging to a group targeted for retribution by the government isn’t an indication of having rights. When black men who are legally carrying guns are murdered by police without consequence then we don’t truly have the right to own guns. It shows that if one ever becomes part of an out group then you too can be targeted.
Clearly you are not part of a targeted group so you feel safe and naively think nothing is amiss. This is ignorant foolishness.
Yeah, that's awful. As far as federal overreach of power goes, that's pretty inexcusable. I'd probably posit that COINTELPRO in the 60s was more insidious, but that doesn't discount this story individually being terrible.
I still maintain that America is not in the midst of its own demise and a comparison to East Germany is inaccurate.
> As far as federal overreach of power goes, that's pretty inexcusable.
Selectively detaining this guy, likely overreach.
Trying to get his phone's unlock code to go on a fishing expedition for whatever they can find, absolutely overreach.
But this guy catching felony charges for giving federal border police a duress PIN to wipe his phone when they asked for an unlock PIN? Not actually overreach.
You have the right to remain silent, not to lie to the police when detained (18 USC § 1001, and many state-level laws to the same effect also exist). Our justice system could not function if people had a right to lie to the police. Once you are detained, whether or not that detention is eventually determined to be lawful, destroying or disposing of your possessions to prevent police from accessing them is also generally a crime.
You fight abuses later, in court. Or, if you're going to use a duress PIN in the moment, you accept the legal consequences.
And yes, giving a duress PIN to wipe a phone when asked for an unlock PIN is a lie which may result in destruction of evidence. And no, the law does not care about "I'm not touching you"-level rationalizations of whether something is a lie or whether it was technically the police who entered the code to wipe the phone. Proximate cause is a longstanding legal concept.
> But this guy catching felony charges for giving federal border police a duress PIN to wipe his phone when they asked for an unlock PIN? Not actually overreach.
I think it's an interesting case that will get litigated in the courts. It seems they'll have to prove that the phone contained "evidence"; it could have just had embarrassing personal photos that he didn't want shared. When a house is raided and someone flushes a toilet, can courts assume they flushed drugs, or does that have to be proven?
I hope he's found not guilty, but either way this definitely is not the "sky is falling", "we're almost a police state" case that folks here are making it out to be. It's a very narrow and novel line.
> When a house is raided and someone flushes a toilet, can courts assume they flushed drugs, or does that have to be proven?
Game it out at the systems level. If the prosecution had to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that what was destroyed would have been evidence, then destruction of evidence would be functionally permissible whenever done competently.
> ...either way this definitely is not the "sky is falling", "we're almost a police state" case that folks here are making it out to be. It's a very narrow and novel line.
Agreed. And activists should generally work with lawyers in order to be familiar with areas of the law they are likely to encounter in the course of their activism. Especially activists who travel internationally.
> then destruction of evidence would be functionally permissible whenever done competently.
Well yes, but ... is that not the case? Game out the opposite. If the prosection doesn't have to demonstrate that something was valid evidence beyond a shadow of doubt that's rife for all sorts of abuse.
In general I don't believe I can catch a (legitimate) felony for locking myself in the bathroom and flushing the toilet during a police raid.
You can't, but you can if you flushed the cocaine. You should also be worried they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you flushed cocaine, even if you only flushed your urine.
> In general I don't believe I can catch a (legitimate) felony for locking myself in the bathroom and flushing the toilet during a police raid.
Most juristictions have a duty to preserve or not to spoil evidence once you are clearly detained or a search is clearly imminent (i.e. the police are knocking on your door), or when litigation can be reasonably anticipated. Behavior like locking the door and then burning/shredding papers, wiping a phone, or even flushing a toilet can absolutely be considered destruction-of/tampering-with evidence past that point, even (and especially) if the evidence is impossible to recover.
I feel like you aren't responding to what I wrote there. My point was that there's presumably no clear evidence that I was destroying evidence in that example even if I was. The example was in regards to the point made in the preceding paragraph.
> If the prosection doesn't have to demonstrate that something was valid evidence beyond a shadow of doubt that's rife for all sorts of abuse.
Assuming that is the preceding paragraph you reference, then there is nothing to respond to because the law is clear. As zugi mentions, obstruction of a federal investigation by tampering with evidence (i.e. potentially anything in the scope of a particular search of which you are aware) in just about any sort of way is illegal under 18 USC § 1519 (and again, most states have similar laws with regard to state officials/departments and searches).
This subthread, the general thread, the linked article, and the original event it covers are all within the context of someone aware they are detained or under investigation. In that context, the prosecution doesn't need to demonstrate that what was destroyed is evidence. Just that the suspect obstructed the search by destroying, altering, or tampering with something in the search's lawful scope.
This state of affairs isn't any more or less rife for abuse than the general process for obtaining a warrant or the standards for an officer assessing probably cause.
Right fair point "evidence" versus "lawful scope". Precision and accuracy of terminology aside, surely you can see the core point I was making there that unless all details (the act of destruction, scope, intent, etc) are demonstrated beyond doubt there's huge potential for abuse.
The details you mention are all hammered out to death and back as a regular part of the legal process, before and during a trial, and by both prosecution and defense. One can only imagine a huge potential for abuse by suspending any and all familiarity with that legal process.
So it turns out destroying a record to obstruct an investigation is also a crime under 18 U.S. Code § 1519. For that they wouldn't need to prove that it was "evidence" or even that it was relevant.
So as much as I sympathize with the guy a d wabt to cheer him on, he's probably screwed.
I'd generally agree that the police shouldn't be able to lie to a detained suspect, or at least that such deception should be more constrained than it is in the context but, in general, the law as practiced hinges on the question, "does police deception render a detained suspect's confession or statements involuntary?"
If yes, then those confessions or statements could become inadmissable (i.e. the suspect was effectively compelled to testify against himself, in violation of the 5th Amendment). When police combine deception with coercion or threats, the answer to that question leans toward yes, but it will depend on the juristiction and the judge and is often assessed on a case-by-case basis. Police in any given juristiction probably have a reasonably good sense (from their own accumulated experience and local training) of what kind of deception results in the produced evidence becoming inadmissable in the courts where the defendant will appear.
> And yes, giving a duress PIN to wipe a phone when asked for an unlock PIN is a lie which may result in destruction of evidence.
I was distressed and got confused and gave the wrong PIN. Anyway there was no evidence on the phone just a few embarrassing photos.
Also I just so happened to catch a bad case of indigestion right as the police knocked down my door. There were absolutely no drugs in the toilet when I flushed it.
To me the far more concerning fact is that this is getting any pushback at all. The response described is what everyone ought to do without exception when asked for their PIN by law enforcement. The right not to be forced to provide access to your own devices needs to be staunchly defended. These devices serve as extensions of ourselves at this point.
> I was distressed and got confused and gave the wrong PIN. Anyway there was no evidence on the phone just a few embarrassing photos.
> Also I just so happened to catch a bad case of indigestion right as the police knocked down my door. There were absolutely no drugs in the toilet when I flushed it.
To repeat, for emphasis: the law does not care about "I'm not touching you"-level rationalizations.
> The response described is what everyone ought to do without exception when asked for their PIN by law enforcement. The right not to be forced to provide access to your own devices needs to be staunchly defended.
If by "response described" you mean "remain silent," then absolutely. Not 100% clear from your last paragraph.
> the law does not care about "I'm not touching you"-level rationalizations.
But it does AFAIK care about plausible deniability. Whether or not any given instance of denial is plausible must of course ultimately be determined by a judge.
> Not 100% clear from your last paragraph.
The "response described" was (I think quite clearly) "provide a duress PIN that wipes the device in violation of the law". I am advocating for civil disobedience in defense of privacy and the right not to self incriminate. These devices have become extensions of ourselves but the law does not currently treat them as such which I see as a violation of my fundamental rights.
Actually even if they were recognized as an extension I don't believe there's any prohibition against reading people's minds. It's just that the technology doesn't exist yet. But it likely will soon so we badly need to update the law to account for that IMO.
> But it does AFAIK care about plausible deniability. Whether or not any given instance of denial is plausible must of course ultimately be determined by a judge.
There is near zero chance that a judge or jury will decide you have plausible deniability for providing a duress PIN when asked by police for an unlock PIN. It is your phone, you had to configure the duress PIN when setting up the phone, knowing what it does, and provide it to police instead of the unlock PIN.
> I am advocating for civil disobedience in defense of privacy and the right not to self incriminate.
You have a right to silence, not a right to lie, and certainly not a right to lie in a way that is the proximate cause of destruction of evidence during a lawful search. Call the lie civil disobedience all you like, but expect totally avoidable federal felony charges in cases like then one at hand, when all you had to do was remain silent (especially as in this case with a GrapheneOS device).
> I don't believe there's any prohibition against reading people's minds
Common law often doesn't require specific prohibitions (or specific updates in the manner of computer code) because the practice of common law has long functioned on the good faith application of human reason and common sense by jurists. Consider the relevant language of the 5th Amendment: "...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..." I think it's extremely likely that, when mind-reading tech is invented, it will be treated as a form of compelled testimony, and therefore impermissible against a defendant (though potentially permissible against a witness with immunity).
I disagree. Back then it was all a big secret. Officially the US was pretending.
Now? It is all out in the open. They're BOASTING about it. The baddies do whatever they want and noone is going to do anything about it besides write a blog. There will be no 1970s backlash with progressive Supreme Court judges and a senate committee investigating Hover.
Despite the normalization of masked federal gunmen kidnapping people based on the color of their skin and the language they speak.... Not even breaking a law in the process, the supreme court legalized racial profiling.
One can just argue about the normalization of people breaking the law by overstaying visas or hopping the border or whatever being the Supreme Court (or whoever you feel like blaming) legalized some other concept that most Americans also find disagreeable.
We don't have to have brown shirts pulling people off the street, and we also don't need to have this stupid fight over simply enforcing our borders like every other country on the planet. Extremists on both sides are as always, simply incorrect. Reject MAGA, reject DSA.
In context to my OP, none of this stuff or policy really affects most people's day to day lives. If you turned the news off you'd probably have no clue people were jumping the border en masse and you'd likely have no clue that those very same people were being arrested and deported.
… very same people were being arrested and deported.
This is an indication you don’t understand what is going on. Some illegals have been deported but amongst those illegals are U.S. citizens and people who are legally allowed to be here. They are being deported without judicial oversight and in some cases in direct violation of judicial orders.
… none of this stuff or policy really affects most people's day to day lives.
Man. What a profoundly immoral thing to say and believe. This illegal shit going on doesn’t affect more than 49.999% of the population so… no big deal.
It is people like you that Martin Luther King described in his letter:
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
> This illegal shit going on doesn’t affect more than 49.999% of the population so… no big deal.
Well it’s more like 95%, and you’re also injecting a false distinction here to suggest 49% of folks think one thing and 51% think another when most Americans have more nuanced views on immigration policy and broadly agree that a legal process must be followed.
I’m ignoring the righteous pearl-clutching (MLK/don’t know what you’re talking about/immoral whatever). I really don’t care.
You are the one who said “doesn’t affect most people”.
But now, what you write is it’s only 5% of the people being affected. Damn. So you acknowledge 5% are affected but that’s ok. It’s only 5%. It is profoundly immoral to think nothing is amiss because it only affects 15 million or so people. It’s not righteous pearl clutching to be alarmed when my neighbors are being illegally targeted. Having a conscience and an ounce of empathy is not righteous pearl clutching. As Edmund Burke said, all that is necessary for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.
Illegal wars, illegal deportations, illegal cancellation of appropriated funds, illegal bribes to give pardons, etc. and your response is that the people alarmed by this are engaging in righteous pearl clutching. You are the problem.
I’ll read any response you wrote but won’t respond further. Those who remain silent while others are terrorized are dispicable.
> You are the one who said “doesn’t affect most people”.
Because it’s true.
> But now, what you write is it’s only 5% of the people being affected.
Well you wrote it was 49% or something. Me saying 5% is still in the bounds of “vast majority not affected”. I’m being generous here as the number is likely even lower and that’s accounting for folks who hired folks or extended family or whatnot.
> It’s not righteous pearl clutching to be alarmed when my neighbors are being illegally targeted.
Are they here illegally? I would expect (aside from heavy handed tactics which I broadly disagree with) that they would eventually be found and deported just like anyone else in any other country. What exactly are you suggesting is “being illegally targeted”?
> Illegal wars, illegal deportations, illegal cancellation of appropriated funds, illegal bribes to give pardons, etc. and your response is that the people alarmed by this are engaging in righteous pearl clutching.
Don’t accuse me of pearl clutching though. You just have to accept my declaration that things are illegal and anyone who disagrees must be immoral and part of the problem. In the words of some famous person, I declare famous saying!!
That’s the argument you’re making and as an independent who can’t stand MAGA or DSA + associates it’s very tiresome. I reject illegal immigration, and I reject heavy handed policing especially by untrained wannabe-be tough guys. If you’re going to turn that into all of these other accusations you’re extremism is the actual problem, not me.
>We don't have to have brown shirts pulling people off the street
That is literally the stage we are in now. You sent it because you are in support of it and to cowardly to admit it. It's the same cowardice that motivated them to wear masks
>In context to my OP, none of this stuff or policy really affects most people's day to day lives
The fact that this doesn't bother you speaks volumes about the kind of person you are
No we're not, and when it started to look like we were heading that way in some limited fashion the public fought back and stopped it, people were fired, and the heavy-handed tactics mostly stopped. In true brown shirt regimes (Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, &c.) they don't stop the heavy handed tactics. In Iran they murdered over 30,000 people for it point blank with automatic weapons.
> You sent it because you are in support of it and to cowardly to admit it. It's the same cowardice that motivated them to wear masks
I don't support it. And I've said that multiple times. I also don't think they should wear masks.
I also have no cowardice about saying anything on the Internet. When you write things like that you sound silly. What's going to happen? Do you think I'm going to get in trouble like it's high school or something for saying an opinion that you happen to disagree with that the public by and large agrees with?
We should control our borders and deport people who violate our laws. Also we shouldn't do all these bad things and treat people inhumanely. The horror! The cowardice! Give me a break.
> The fact that this doesn't bother you speaks volumes about the kind of person you are
I didn't say it doesn't bother me, I said that it doesn't affect most people's day-to-day lives. There's a key difference and if you spent less time grandstanding and more time reading what I actually wrote you would realize that difference.
Its the same in Russia. Ignore the news go through life, don't say anything about the government. Once in a while people will fall down from windows and die of radiation poisoning of course but thats ignorable.
Normal day of a normal person living in dictatorship ... is normal. There are sometimes periods where a lot of people are at risk at the same time, but they pass.
Many people lived their normal lives through communism with no issue. They ignored bad stuff and abuses just like your tv turning off person.
And yet, they were living in dictatorship. And found out if they tried to do something different.
Well, all might be fine, you might be a little obedient drone, not angering your masters, making sure to be apolitical - only to be mobilized & send to die in a ditch in a useless war.
"Pshhhtt, the regime isn't oppresive. Sure, there is the securitate, but it's much better now, see, they released the political prisoners. Yes, some people got killed, but they were stirring waves, going around saying shit. You got to mind your business and go to work and not mind all the political stuff and you're fine. Ez-pz. Not sure what the fuss is about we are a great country, look how much stuff we make!"
It's honestly insulting to people who have actually lived and died under dictatorial regimes, communist regimes, and other barbaric forms of government and those who, and many times they've been Americans, who fought and died to preserve liberty for others in the United States and elsewhere, for you to sit here and say that they now live in the United States which is also a dictatorship.
Anyone who has experienced anything like real suffering would tell you the United States is a wonderful country and is a land of freedom and prosperity, even if at times it is flawed and imperfect. Tell the Filipino bakery that just opened in my home town that they live in a dictatorship, go tell the Iranian dissidents in Los Angelas that they had more freedom under the Iranians, go tell the folks in Hong Kong that the US is a brutal dictatorship. You'll get laughed out of the parking lot.
Your dislike of Donald Trump or whatever (he should be in jail because of Jan 6 - uh oh I hope the gestapo doesn't come get me for insulting dear leader - interesting how they can't, isn't it?) doesn't change anything. Was it a dictatorship for the 4 years under Biden's term? Or only a dictatorship while Trump is the elected president? Not only is your characterization incorrect from a philosophical standpoint, it's functionally incorrect too. If we lived in a dictatorship we wouldn't even have elections let alone any number of other constitutional checks. Or have you not been paying attention when the Trump administration loses a court case and quietly accepts the consequences? What dictatorship is bound by the rule of law, can be removed from power by an election, and has to respect Constitutional rights?
I was born in a country while under the communist regime. My grandfather was killed by the communists. I, myself, did not live very much under the communist regime, but I vividly remember the 90's, which, while not politically oppressive in the way the communist regime was, were in some ways, much worse economically. What I did see is how people remember the communist regime and how they seem to have perceived it from within. Yes, they were afraid, but they did continue their lives and in some ways, quite happy lives.
I think I failed to convey some critical parts with my post. The _feeling_ I describe is the actual outlook that most people had during that time. I am not saying that the US is at that point yet, what I am trying to say is people don't usually wake up one morning and just say "Ah, ok, now I'm living under an oppressive regime" things just change and many times they will defend said regime. Just sample asking a bunch of Chinese people what they think about their current regime. I bet many of them will be quite happy with the arrangement and how things are going although they are clearly living under authoritarianism.
Yes, in many ways the US has many institutions that still work, but they have been eroding at an astonishing speed under the cheers of 1/3 of the population. If I use the same logic of projecting into the future the rate of change that... AI proponents use for example... How free do you think the US will be in 5, 10 years? You're not there yet, but factoring all the things going on, your country has done a capital mistake.
I personally am a bit frightened of what will happen in November since you have a president that has been consistently eroding the rule of law, put sycophants in positions of leadership, showed disdain for the rule of law, and elections and institutions, allies, general competency.
You might confuse my emotion with one of disdain or hatred for the US or, competitive aggression or impotent denial and projecting for dissatisfaction in my own country. ? But that's not it. My emotional state relative to the US is one of someone grieving after a personal hero I used to look up to who got brain damage and now goes down the street with a loaded gun yelling incoherent ramblings.
> I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back.
I'm pretty sure that barring shenanigans we'll get an D president next time. I'm also pretty sure that we're kicking many cans (economic and otherwise) down the road that are set to blow up during the next administration so that we'll likely be back here again in 2032 with an R. Remember, after Watergate Carter was able to win in 1976 because people were tired of corruption - at the time most people thought that another R administration wouldn't happen for a couple of decades at least. But Reagan(R) won just 4 years later in 1980.
I'm also pretty sure that given the goldfish memory that most American voters have that a hereditary Trump dynasty isn't at all off the table. Look at the Philippines: they have a Marcos in power again. Look at Peru: they've got a Fujimori in power again.
Counter point is, throughout history America didn’t have a competition that surpassed it across many standards. Japan got very close, but got contained in some ways. China doesn’t need to play ball.
I’ve mentioned it in the past as well - all actions look like a knee-jerk reactions and hail marys to try to regain the power.
It has already lost. America lost in Vietnam. Lost in Afghanistan. Turned Middle East into a humongous mess. Now losing badly in Iran. The only "wins" it had were against Countries where odds were already heavily in its favor (in other words invading tiny countries that did not have the technological wherewithal or the will necessary to fight back).
> 10y later they're richer than ever
The rich are richer than ever yes. Ask any common American citizen and he/she will come chasing after you for saying this.
> its companies have global dominance of the most world-changing technology of the last 20y. I just don't think "the collapse" is coming anytime soon.
That dominance is fast eroding. America itself has ended globalization. It is retreating from many crucial positions: like when it comes to cross-border payments, protecting freedom of navigation in high seas, deals that it had previously negotiated with all countries of the World, unable to protect allies in the Middle East and even in South East Asia, not delivering on defense commitments with partner nations... the list goes on and on.
> If anyone's interested in a friendly wager, my email is open. I'll happily go 1:1 odds that America will have a new president come 2029 and the country will still remain the world's richest and most powerful.
None of us believe America will collapse by 2029 and that there wouldn't be another President (unless Trump is really stupid enough to go down that route which I don't think he will). But by 2045? Yeah absolutely is possible.
You are undoubtedly correct that at some point there will be new leadership in the US.
Politics makes leadership change a possibility. Biology makes it an inevitability.
But I don't think the evidence is very strong that switching from one man to a different man, even if the new man wears a blue hat instead of a red hat, will make that much difference against capital and its surveillance state.
This isn't a false equivalence "both sides" argument. I'd greatly prefer the blue hat over the red hat.
But the blue hat only makes the underlying forces of late capitalism a little slower and a little less vicious, while simultaneously legitimizing that system.
Yeah, mostly agree but playing devils advocate, PRISM was authorized under bush, implemented under Obama, and is being abused by Trump. Obama promised safeguards, but it’s pretty clear those were just a ruse. It’s only going to get worse. The well deserved controversy around Flock is the perfect example.
“Silliness” I have masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles barking orders at US citizens in my neighborhood and zip-tying minors who did nothing but run away and cry. I have neighbors cheering it on. Not silly at all when you see it up close.
If they are masked men in unmarked vehicles, how do you know they’re federal agents? Aren’t they just criminals that you should call the police to stop?
And you have the Attorney General of the United States, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security saying "it doesn't matter, if they tell you they're federal agents, you need to comply."
But excuse me, Mr Masked Man, let me call the local police just in case you're not actually federal agents... is probably going to get the same reaction whether they're criminals or ICE agents.
I agree. It's actually quite insulting to other countries whose actual atrocities were measured in lives lost. I voted for Kamala but Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. He's just a loser, he's not even remotely brave enough to be Hitler Jr.
The guy doesn't have the stomach for real totalitarianism. Just populism, corruption, and weakening the country.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is just another word for "describing Trump actions in honest realistic terms rather then whitewashing them".
And considering how right talks about Mandani, Biden, Harris ... it is ridiculous that the derogatory term goes only toward ... people who talk about Trump.
The USA started from and has come back from way worse in the past.
Some dark, dark things happened in the USA, and almost every progression had a corresponding backslide - but the tick-tock has always ticked further towards a freer, more equal, and more equitable society.
I’m willing to hope this era is another ‘tock’. But that does require people to not just give up (or even work to accelerate the backslide?!) as you seem to be suggesting is the best course of action.
You can make a credible argument that the American society is less free, less equal, and less equitable than it was at its founding?
There are just so many ways in which this seems crazy to me. I feel like you think you’re luring me into some sort of rhetorical trap - but to pick the two elephants in the room, a large proportion of the population was literally owned by other people, and only white male landowners could vote.
I don’t think any reasonable person would think I am claiming that every ‘tick’ makes things better along every possible axis for every possible person. It’s pretty obvious that judging whether America’s ‘ticks’ have been towards ‘a freer, more equal, and more equitable society’ means considering the state of society in aggregate.
On your particular example, there are lots of debates to be had about forms of taxation and which kinds are ‘fairer’ - but more importantly, and more overwhelmingly: eighteen percent of the population of America was literally owned by other people in 1790. They couldn’t ‘spend freely from the fruits of one's labor’ to any extent at all.
Your line of argumentation asserts that freedom has increased over time with allowances for any form of subjugation by the government short of enslavement. I don't doubt that you're making a good faith argument, but it doesn't engage with the real problem of abuse of power and disenfranchisement of the people because no matter how bad it gets for the average citizen it will never be as bad as chattel slavery. It's hard to argue in good faith on a nuanced issue with someone who has a one liner mic drop response to everything.
Do you honestly think that our society was more (or as) equal 200 years ago than it is today?
Or even 50 years ago? Even in the 1970s, there were places in the United States that women couldn't get a checking account without a man co-signing on the loan.
We can certainly take issue with how rich countries oppress and exploit poor countries today, but you can't honestly say it is worse today than it was during colonialism.
Prior to the enclosure period of English common law, land was assumed to be available to the private use of government subjects. The American West was the same before it was swallowed by the US government. The current situation is provably less free along this dimension. You could argue that this is not important relative to other things (this is a value judgement), or that things done outside of the state are outside of the discussion (this is a a fallacy, a lot of things once outside of the state find themselves inside it today), or you could say that this does not account for intra-community conflict between settlers and natives (this is a straw man)
Obviously yes. Imagine for a second that you're a MAGA supporter, anti-abortion, stick it to the liberals type of person. Would you say that voting has been effective to get the things you care about passed into law (or repealed)?
And to add to that, a very loyal set of voters who will literally vote for more of the same even when it directly and empirically makes their lives worse.
We have unprecedented corruption in the White House but much of the other stuff is not new territory. It’s bad and a regression I hate to see. But we can always improve when the people demand better. The people always have the power, even if they don’t realize it.
I remain hopeful that we will react to this latest test by improving the guardrails again. The current regime does not by any means have the popular support of the citizenry, so there is every reason to expect some backlash and consequences on the other end of this. It'll take years, though, to work through.
> US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era
> The social dynamics are the same - the abuses, the selective enforcement, the lack of recourse, the same characters in the roles of various levels of "law enforcement" and "politics"
What you're describing is politics in general. The question is not whether abuses occur (they do, everywhere), but whether the system is built to be resilient and course-correct over time.
The thing about freedom is not just that it's less miserable than the alternative; more importantly, freedom enables a feedback loop where people's individual choices carry corrective information: what they buy, what they sell, how much, at what price, who they vote for, what they write/publish, what they read, what they say etc. The system at large can correct itself over time if (a) these choices are allowed to have power to influence the system, and (b) the courts enforce justice without interference by the ruling party.
Not a single communist country in the 20th century stayed communist for more than a few years when only 2 freedoms were allowed: (1) freedom of the press, and (2) freedom of the courts from control by the ruling party.
The Soviets and East Germans suppressed every form of freedom that carried information or potential corrective power, because they maxxed on staying in power above all - they effectively had to. No one wants to be under real communism/socialism[0], so for it to be stable it has to be maximally suppressive.
This has been legal since long before Trump, if you don't like it there's laws in motion to ban it you can support, but entering across a border you've been allowed to be searched without a warrant for decades at least. And if you're being searched and then you destroy what they're trying to search... Here you are.
“ he has been ensnared by National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, a sweeping directive issued by President Trump last September that expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include crimes like getting in the way of immigration enforcement.
His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charging a person with destroying evidence using a program designed to wipe a device clean after a specific code is entered.”
So, while “no privacy at the border” has always been a thing, the re-categorisation of this as “domestic terrorism” is new.
Quite possibly the worst take I’ve ever read on hacker news. “Things are generally bad now so the entire country should roll over and get fucked.” What are you even thinking dude? Maybe take a walk outside or something..
The tendency to describe things that are so essentially characteristic of the capitalist imperial core as resembling the Soviet Union is always so funny
The US has it's mid-term elections this november, and it's possible, and even likely, that the Democratic candidates will win overwhealmingly. The Democrats are not a monolith, either, the Democratic Socialists of America political group is the very progressive part of the Democratic party, they are the ones that are not accepting dark money campaign donations. I do not agree with a lot of the unrealistic things that some DSA candidates have said, but those or the candidates that aren't winning the primaries. There is a giant blue tidal wave coming in November. Trump will become nothing more than a lame duck "president", and he'll likely be impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate and the Justice System will probably be the final arbiter of his fate. That's the way I see it. And I never believed I would be saying what I just said, but the fact is that since trump was elected, the democrats have flipped 31 (at last count) formorly Republican held seats, and the republicans have flipped exactly zero seats from democrat to republican. The American People are not their goverment, especially right now, even though that's not how it was meant to be, but I know one thing, they are fed up and enough is enough.
People have no idea. They’re destroying old books. Just like the last time (1), and the time before that (2), and the time before that(3), which were:
1) Nazi Germany, following debt/inflationary collapse of Weimar Republic.
2) Bolshevik Revolution, following WWI induced debt collapse of Tsars.
3) French Revolution, following debt collapse of Monarchy.
Now where are we? 40 trillion in debt. The interest is $1.1 trillion the amount added to it yearly is $2.1 trillion. The entirety of a government spending would need to be wiped out just to keep it where it is.
If you had the books that got burned, you’d know the cycle, and the fact that electing democrats isn’t gonna change a damn thing.
These AI companies know by now that there is no real monetization path that will recoup the over 1 trillion dollars invested by these companies. There is a circular spending spree among large corporations paying each other massive amounts of money to try to make the promise of AI real. It's not. Is it neat? Yeah. Is it reliable? No.
Where the money is not coming from are consumers. There is no consumer market for AI that stands a chance of making these companies profitable.
It's a bubble. Just like the sub-prime mortgage loan debacle of 2008. It's going to burst. These companies are large enough that the government will declare them necessary, and will give a large portion of the taxes we pay to these companies to keep them afloat.
Ah yes, the government bailout, and the government will decide who pays the real price. And that will be me, and you and the rest of us that aren't rich.
These AI companies are aware of this, or they wouldn't take the gamble. So I would have to disagree and say that the government is and will be involved in how all of this plays out.
I think the best case scenario is that the democrats win sufficient control of congress that they can both stop the legislative agenda (to the extent it even exists) and interfere enough with presidential executive actions that everything stalls until we reach the next presidential election.
I have exactly zero expectations of real consequences to Trump. He has far too much popular support for that to be realistic. But I will say that everybody else in his regime better hope he writes them a broad preemptive pardon before he leaves office because the teflon only works for him.
Trump knows a lot of dirt on a lot of very powerful people, and he likely has dementia. One thing about dementia is that it can cause people to say things they normally would not say. That's a huge risk to those that are afraid he's going to start blurting out these secrets. That makes him a liability to the kind of people that can make anyone worth more dead than alive.
This is obviously pure speculation on my part, but I think it's quite plausible.
> I have exactly zero expectations of real consequences to Trump. He has far too much popular support for that to be realistic.
That's the problem. He has wide support despite gestures around. The thing a large part of the population supports _this_. It's not going away. This is the reason that people are bearish on US future.
In law school we skipped border search cases because the border crosser cases can basically be summed up with “you have no right to privacy at the border.” This has been the common law for 5000 years. It has nothing to do with Trump, or cell phones, or anything other than the notion that a sovereign has an absolute right to know what is crossing its borders.
Not OP but generally states are considered to be a central political organization that maintains a monopoly on violence within a defined area.
The border is the thing that makes the state and have been since states first emerged about 5,000 years ago. If the state cannot preserve its border it is no longer a state.
Border control can't stop you from entering the country. Please do not spread misinformation.
If you mean non-citizens? Well, I invite you to check out many other places all across the world who also pick and choose who they will allow to visit.
It's been this way in the UK for years now. Always interesting to hear how far the rest of the West the US is.
If you come to the UK the police are allowed to stop you without suspicion and force you to answer their questions honestly or be charged with a crime for remaining silent or lying. You must also give them access to all of your devices if asked, or again face criminal charges.
Most people here are okay with it though. Ultimately if you're not doing anything wrong you'll probably be okay.
> I'm so very sorry, but the best you can do from here is speedrun the collapse.
This is a pretty silly take. If you actually follow the news, all of these issues are getting pushback. It's not at all clear that even a competent fascist-leaning government would be able to push through what the current one is trying to do, and sadly for them, competence in their ranks is in short supply.
The bigger issue has nothing to do with the faddish concerns of the current government. The era we should be looking to is not East Germany/late Soviet - it's more like the Gilded Age. Robber barons need to be dealt with from time to time.
It's a temporary situation, it isn't necessarily a permanent situation.
Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days.
And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote. Things are likely to change by the end of this year, and in another 2 years we could have a very different government that could undo a lot of the bullshit going on right now.
Tens of millions have voted for this 3 times in the past 10 years, it succeeded twice. This is not going away, half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule and will do anything to take the whole country with them.
Republicans are in every way trying to turn this into an authoritarian hellhole. "Cruelty is the point" is a phrase used with regards to right-wing politics in America. We're heading in the worst direction possible, but it takes a bit longer and more work to get a country the size of America with different states to become fully authoritarian. It doesn't happen overnight like it can in small countries.
Voter preferences can change with time, as voters observe the effects of their previous selections. Most voters don't want and didn't vote for authoritarian rule. They are humans with many diverse challenges & concerns in their lives. Their votes are an attempt to balance/compromise among those.
Only a small part, maybe 1/3 of the US wanted this. Not the whole population. Sadly 1/3 of eligible voters don't vote - they are the ones who didn't want this but don't have enough sense to vote, and that's different than wanting trump.
Voters change their mind all the time. Sure, there are still plenty in the US who want all this, but Trump's approval ratings are at or near all-time lows, and at least some people who voted for him finally see his lies for what they are, and have regrets.
It's still worrying! His supporters still number lots of people who a) are still somehow too gullible to realize Trump and the MAGA crowd are not going to make their lives better, and b) actively want what's going on. But there are easily more eligible voters in the US who wouldn't vote for a Republican with a gun to their head, or who are finally starting to understand that "sticking it to the libs" is hurting themselves.
It's not going away, but it's likely that it's declining, and possible it will continue to do so. Whether or not it declines quickly enough, before these jackasses consolidate power and break what's left of our institutions... well, that remains to be seen.
I take some solace for how there is such a hard floor of support for Trump. Counterintuitively, I consider that good news. Because any regular politician would be so far underwater at this point that they might well fear for their life. What Trump has is a solid 1/3 of the population that are so far up his ass they can't see daylight. That works out great for him, and poorly for every other GOP politician. He's achieved demagogue status, which is easier said than done. Vance ain't got it, Rubio ain't got it, there's not really anybody on the sidelines who looks like they may have it either. So when Trump is gone, the GOP is going to undergo another wild gyration in ideology after the infighting settles down. And if they don't find another halfway plausible demagogue, they might be a back into minority party status for the next two decades. There is precedent for this.
But the dems are almost certainly getting ready for their own come to jesus moment, their base is pretty pissed off too. Could get interesting. A boring candidate will probably be the preferred choice after the chaos of these years, but after that I think it might get wild.
You can rage against Trump and republicans as much as you want but in the end the democrats must learn to formulate why anybody should vote FOR them. Even in the current chaos they aren’t able to bring up a coherent message and follow through when they are in power. I see the same in Germany. AfD is getting stronger while the established parties get nothing done.
It reminds me somewhat of the state of the Weimar Republic. The democratic parties failed which gave an opening to the nazis.
Somehow, no one votes for nazi because they believe that stuff. Rhetorically. They are always victims with no agency.
They do believe in stuff. And their soft supporters succesfully manage to turm the blame to others.
Trump situation is result of years of hard work of heritage foundation, conservative preachers, tech bros, supreme court and so on. He represents their project being succesfull.
It's both. Why did the Nazis win ethe election instead of the liberals? Two reasons play equal part. One, many people are Nazis. Two, liberals didn't give any reason to vote for them, except for "we're not Nazis" and people who've voted on that basis for the last six elections and continued to see life get worse are now fed up - at best they don't vote and at worst they switch to voting Nazi.
The US is not the first country to fall into this trap. The exact same happened in Germany. The non-Nazi party offered nothing to anyone besides not being Nazi.
Liberals gave plenty of reasons to vote for them. But, those reasons did not mattered, because none of that was about what democratic party actually do. And also importantly, the difference between the parties was actually small. The narrative of nazi winning a lot is false.
The reasons for Trump vote were conservatives enflamed panic about trans and wish to harm them. It was hate of non-white immigrants.
And above all, it was vote for male supremacy. It was based on lies and wish to enact harm and cruelty. Openly so.
If you want to win next time, you need to stop closing eyes from that. Stop idealizing and projecting motivations on republican voters. Stop whitewashing them and listen to what they are saying and when.
The Democratic party started, fought, and lost a culture war almost before Republicans even responded. They alienated their voters. Heritage Foundation didn't need to do anything. And fringe groups got more ammo.
I don't even think Trump was the Republicans' best shot, only popular enough to beat Clinton and Harris (and lose to Biden), and probably tanking his party now.
>half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule
That's half the people who showed up to vote, not "half the voting population". 1/3 of the eligible voters simply didn't vote, and from the people I've encountered that don't vote, they are mostly left-leaning.
No, stupidity and self-harm aren't going away, those are human traits. The current admin is actively hurting everyone, with tariffs and stupid wars he campaigned that he wouldn't start, ICE in every city everywhere causing chaos even to right-wing supporter-owned businesses (they wanted immigration reform but not like that!). This admin has shit the bed, and even his supporters are feeling that. They are now in the "finding out" phase, and the next phase doesn't look so good for republicans in the next election because of it.
Does anyone on the other side have a credible plan to undo the damage?
Where's the Project 2028 book?
Is there anyone credible putting together the Executive Orders to undo the stack of shit, is anyone putting together a short list of District Attorneys to interview on January 21, etc?
That's the thing that worries me. The Democratic party just doesn't have their shit together in that way. They absolutely should be developing this sort of plan. I expect there is some plan, but I doubt it's as comprehensive or in-depth as Project 2025. And it needs to be.
On a long enough timeline, nothing is permanent. The question is how long it lasts and how bad it gets before it gets better.
In terms of the ending, East Germany was nearly an ideal case. The state just sort of gently fell over. The country got absorbed into a friendly neighbor. There wasn't much loss of life, no widespread destruction.
Then there's East Germany's predecessor state, which ended because it decided to wage war on half the world, and its people bore the consequences. Millions dead, cities wrecked, occupation by foreign armies, the country carved up. "This too shall pass" isn't always a good thing.
Or look at the state that created and sustained East Germany. Borne out of violent revolution, decades of repression, collapse, turmoil, economic hardship, brief flirtation with democracy, de facto dictatorship, no end in sight.
My biggest worry with the US right now isn't the government itself. It's that so many people want this government. Voting doesn't help when the voters want the bad stuff. We could have a very different government in another two years if the people want it. I'm not convinced they do. If they do I'm not convinced that sentiment will last. We already went through this once, and the "actually, let's not give the shitheads power" sentiment fell apart by the next election.
The people want this administration and their right-wing politics gone, and the right-wing knows it - if the people really wanted the current shitstorm to continue the right-wing wouldn't be so desperate to suppress the vote, gerrymander like madmen, and use every questionable lever to prevent people to vote like trying to extinguish all mail-in voting, etc.
I'm sure a big group of people want that, but I wouldn't call it "the people" when the president has a ~38% approval rating. That's low enough to lose an election but still way too high for me to be comfortable with it. And "the people" have extremely short memories, as we saw last time around.
> Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days.
> And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote.
so then you admit the outcome here is contingent/conditional. do you understand that means we are already in dire circumstances if the outcome isn't certain?
You don't need to go to other countries to play your fears, lest we forget our constitution is a pro-slavery document and one of the first acts of congress was the fugitive slave laws.
I think it's more effective to stick to our own history because this country has always been a struggle for workers outside of a small very respite after WW2 that has been actively fought against and weakened since.
Not to sound like a contrarian, but no. They would have thrown it in a faraday bag, cloned the device, and then would use one of the many existing forensic tools available to crack the pin.
That's crazy. Here in the UK border police can question you for any reason (no need for suspicion) and if you refuse to answer questions or give them access to your devices you'll be charged under terror legalisation.
> Under Schedule 7, a police officer with the mandated accreditation does not need prior authority or suspicion to stop, question, search, or if necessary, detain someone. However, they may only stop and question a person for the purpose of allowing a determination of whether that person appears to be someone who is or who has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
How this is abused on the other hand, I presume, might depend on your skin shade.
The charges are the punishment. You are imprisoned, risk losing your career, risk losing reputation, and still have to hire a lawyer. The costs are incredibly asymmetric. This leads to the majority of people complying, which only emboldens the state.
I don't know about you, but don't people use encryption to retain privacy? And are people still free to manage their personal information? Doesn't a duress PIN present that information in its intended form? I'm confused.
Next they'll be demanding the passwords to your dropbox and onedrive, because you "might have uploaded something from your phone before re-entering the country". Bet on it.
What about none citizens? Customs kicks you out or throws you into a camp first.
E: but seriously, what happens to non citizens. What happens if you bring a burner/wiped phone? I assume digit forensics can confirm it was pre wiped but what's topping them from alleged you wiped on US soil.
That has been the case for a long while. I used to travel a lot for work - Serbia, Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Australia, NZ, Qatar, Kuwait, Moldova - but the only unpleasantness I received at a border/intl airport was on landing in the US, twice; NY both times. Talk about rude and aggressive, for no reason at all. I'm from the UK, by the way.
My fondest border experience was many years ago when entering France; this was before the UK had joined the EU. (Our later exit was dumb, IMO.)
Anyhow, a youngish officer - probably mid-20s or so - examined my passport while asking questions, in perfect English. His voice was even and his demeanour calm and professional. Then he took a step back, closed my passport and put it in his pocket. A few seconds later, he started laughing and said: "The look on your face. Priceless. Welcome to Paris."
"wElL yEs, we're not completely fucked yet" - Saying that is how we got here
America didn't have an abrupt revolution like in China or Russia, just the collective populace willingly being complacent bitches for the last 26 years
Prison labor and slavery are two separate concepts. You’d never accuse the ancestors of a black person of being “prison laborers”.
What is happening in China is bona fide slavery and it’s telling that your response comes back almost like clockwork whenever it’s brought up on this or any website.
i think it's just that the American population is the last bunch who gives a damn about it, and the pockets of resistance still makes the news... the same happens mostly everywhere else, just without much complaints.
e.g. in Hungary the authorities treat it as a felony to possess an equipment that can record video or sound and it's not obvious when looking at it. 2-8 years in prison for mere posession, i.e. even if it's turned off in your backpack. random nonsense that if it can also make phone calls then it doesn't qualify (the above is the law paraphrased).
Since there are zero devices that are released that don’t indicate recording, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to outlaw modification of recording equipment to hide recording.
You know, the same way we would be rightfully outraged if Apple was allowing applications to turn on the web cam without signaling to the user that the camera is engaged.
That’s all aside from the fact that Hungary was run by authoritarian minded people. But just as I think it should be illegal for cameras installed in glasses to work without an indicating light, I don’t see how this recording light situation you are describing is really such a highlight of Orban’s excesses.
Technology is becoming too significant an existential threat to all governments. IMO, this is the "animal lashing out when backed into a corner" stage of their arc. All of the bills are coming due and they're having to answer for them.
Stuff like this incident (plus the whole surveillance gambit) just being a reflex out of fear, desperate to stay in power just a little bit longer. The funny part is, in the lashing out, they're exposing themselves and their true nature to an extent that the old illusions are fading fast. I implore people to never forget: your government is comprised of other citizens who are exactly like you; they're neither special nor omnipotent. They're just collecting a paycheck under a title.
If memory serves, I think this is also suggested in the book The Fourth Turning but don't hold me to that.
> Technology is becoming too significant an existential threat to all governments. IMO, this is the "animal lashing out when backed into a corner" stage of their arc. All of the bills are coming due and they're having to answer for them.
Forgive my ignorance, but how is any of this true? Frontier LLM labs are practically begging governments to tell them how to act, the most profitable class of technology company is surveillance-focused (like Flock and Palantir) precisely because the government money is ubiquitous and unquestioning, and everyone else is "donating" money as fast as they can and getting blanket legal indemnification in return.
You're not being ignorant; it's a pretty abstract line of reasoning, I'll admit.
The logic (again, IMO) is that if large swaths of these governments can be superseded by AI itself—which they're abundantly aware of—then over time we'll see their size organically shrink (but I would anticipate that shrinking to be preceded by an explosive growth first—just like an animal will puff itself up as a defense mechanism).
The money to labs is another fear/panic move: fork over money to your destructor so that it's more benevolent towards your favor when it finally brings down the hammer—that's why they tried to assert dominance over Mythos, etc (appear strong when you're weak). That may sound crazy to someone technical, but realize, most of the people coming into contact with this stuff think it's fucking HAL 9000.
Assuming that foreign competition makes the frontier labs irrelevant (based on my own recent experiments w/ stuff like Kimi K3, this is increasingly likely) or at least, not worthy of current domestic investment levels, you'll see a pullback in the markets. The markets are the only gunpowder the current day government has for propping up their illusion. If that goes, psychologically, it will be impossible to convince most citizens short of direct violence that they need to remain in power much longer.
I'm not presenting this as a "tomorrow" or "ten years from now" shift. I'd guess this will be more on order of 30-50 years, stair stepped. And in the step down, I anticipate full bore authoritarian chaos as the candy and toys get taken away. Maybe even a dictator or two emerging in the places we'd least expect.
So, I would read this less as "reading my crystal ball" and more like "some internet guy's moderately schizophrenic read on the current state of chaos."
I know surveillance is on par in the UK, but is the UK also building and populating massive detention centers where people are kept without due process*? Are they flooding the streets of liberal cities with soldiers*? Killing citizens on the streets of liberal states (Minnesota) out in the open? Has nationalism completely overtaken the government and citizenship? Has the opposition party been completely neutered? Does your leader openly break any laws of their choosing while plundering national coffers?
I'm not sure if surveillance is on a par in the UK anymore. ANPR (police run license plate recognition system that scoops up all plates that pass) was a big point of contention during 90s and 00s, but even that has been superseded by Flock (private collection, no major legal safeguards, AI based constant review rather than human review etc).
Law enforcement are underpaid, overworked, and they aren't even respected anymore. A lot are fine, but a lot of people are ending up there because they can't get any other job [1]. I don't think these attacks on freedom are always malicious, I think a lot of it is people in law enforcement who aren't capable of understanding the not-so-subtle difference between "law enforcement" and "law authority".
[1] - See stories from 20 years ago about people being turned away from law enforcement roles for having "too high an IQ". Or recent stories (such as one I heard on the podcast of a former FBI agent) about new recruits who can't read.
So far as I can tell --- and someone challenged me on this recently, saying they'd been in court over a case related to it, so take this with a small grain of salt --- this "too high IQ" thing happened once, in New London CT, and if that's really the only documented case you have to wonder whether it wasn't just New London making an excuse for why they didn't hire someone they just didn't like the vibes of. I can say with assurance that there's no "IQ cap" in cop hiring around here; there's a standardized assessment, and there's no score cap on it.
I wince at the disrespect shown to the profession on message board threads (in part because it feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and in part because it's so clear that the people expressing that disrespect would be less happy if they couldn't make these arguments --- i.e., they want policing to be bad), but normal people love police. Our resident beat officer showed up at our block parties and was a minor celebrity.
The difference is that this guy gave a code that wiped the device while it was under investigation. That's obstruction.
If he wiped his phone before crossing the border, he would have been fine.
If he refused to give his password to the phone, he would have been held up for a bit and then he would have to leave his phone, but he would be fine. American citizens cannot be denied entry into the US.
The difference is that the phone was wiped while it was under investigation because of an instruction he gave the CBP. That was ill-advised because that is clearly obstruction. He didn't understand the law and now he's probably going to pay for it.
And I say this as someone who had a very bad experience at the border. A CBP accused me of not being the same person on my Green Card and I had to wait 15 mins for that to clear up even though there was nothing to dispute here, it was me. The CBP are fascists and it doesn't matter who is president, this was during Obama's presidency.
So we're presumed guilty until proven otherwise (the presumption is, any data we delete must be illegal; couldn't possibly be nude selfies that the government has no right to see)
What I don't understand is if he just didn't give any password, he would have been fine. It's only because he gave him a duress pin that he's in trouble.
So, in both cases the government wouldn't have access to the contents of the phone
They might have a way to gain access anyway. That was that case where the FBI got the locked iPhone 5C of a San Bernardino shooter suspect. Apple refused to unlock it, so the FBI paid a hacking firm to do it. If there's no known vuln to get into a phone today, I wonder if they'd hold onto it in hopes that one shows up later.
That suspect's iPhone 5C had a weak numeric passcode, so the only defense was hardware security limiting the number of attempts. Someone reverse-engineered that, wasn't a backdoor. I'm not sure how GrapheneOS differs from regular Android or iPhone on hardware security, but seems like it's basically the same. Need a secure passphrase to be truly safe.
18 months is, by precedent, the limit on contempt for refusal to decrypt[0], but this administration is happy to disregard any precedent that does not agree with them.
Actually no, they are required to allow you to enter the country, but they will make it a hassle, to the point of dehydrating you and/or refusing bathroom access, and confiscate the device in the end and access is through other technical means.
> Courts have generally found that compelling individuals to provide their numeric or alphanumeric passcode is potentially testimonial under the Fifth Amendment, as it forces the defendant to reveal “the contents of his own mind.” In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum 670 F.3d at 1345; see also U.S. v. Apple MacPro Computer, 851 F.3d 238 (3d Cir. 2017). It is analogous to compelling production of the combination to a wall safe, which is testimonial, as opposed to surrendering the key to a strongbox, which is not. See Doe v. U.S., 487 U.S. 201, 220 (1988). However, even if a court finds that providing the passcode is “testimonial,” it may still fall under the “foregone conclusion” exception
In short, you can't be compelled to give up the code in a dragnet attempt to find evidence against you (e.g. a boarder guard can't riffle through your text messages to see if you might have done something illegal), but if it's already certain that particular evidence exists on the device as a result of other evidence, they may be able to compel you to give up your passcode.
Note though that the cases where this has come up are very few and far between, and there isn't a super clear overriding precedent to follow.
In general though, the best choice here is to say nothing at all and work with a lawyer to figure out how to proceed.
Would it be permissible to wipe your phone before going through customs to get back into the US? If they ask to search your already wiped phone, you aren’t destroying any evidence.
We were talking about an attacker taking an image of the SSD prior to it being wiped not helping them because information needed to derive the key encryption keys is gone from the secure element. It similarly doesn't help them to do a brute force on a server farm since they're rate limited by the secure element. It only allows 20 attempts and has rapidly increasing delays between those. There's also hardware bound key derivation but that only helps improve the strength of a decent password. The secure element rate limiting makes even a random 6 digit PIN highly insecure unless an attacker can exploit the secure element.
I wouldn't assume that to be the case. It's illegal under federal law to destroy evidence of a crime. Just what the government needs to do to show that you've destroyed evidence of a crime and not just the sexting you did with your girlfriend is a pretty murky area of law, from what I can tell.
I would not present a phone to customs that had clearly just been wiped.
You're speaking nonsense since there was no charge or warrant against him. There was no crime that was committed. People are free to use their phone for f sake. People who reason as poorly as you will lead to all remaining rights being lost.
The way he wiped it is legal for the same reason. It was an illegal search and he was under no obligation to preserve the data on his phone.
It's legal to refuse to provide a PIN/password in the US. He's a US citizen so they couldn't refuse him entry. If he wasn't then the result would be getting deported.
It likely would have been a much better decision to refuse to provide the PIN/password and rely on the encryption and device security instead. He could have done a reboot or shutdown in advance but even without that it would have done it automatically via the locked device auto-reboot timer. The secure element only allows 20 attempts for key derivation with rapidly growing delays between those. If he had a strong passphrase then even a secure element exploit wouldn't obtain the data protected by it.
You're losing track of the discussion which was about erasing data before arriving at the counter. In any event, if you're so willing to "bend over" to the man, please try not to take others down with you.
I did not, in fact, lose track of that point. I was merely pointing out it's not a solution. I'm sure the guy in the topic article thought he had things figured out, too.
You know how they say ignorance of the law is no excuse? That holds true even if the law seems unreasonable or incomprehensible.
99% of ppl would not hesitate than risk detainment
> Would you care to post screenshots of your inboxes and browser history for the class?
i would be since i dont have anything to hide, do you have anything to hide or find embarassing ? I don't maybe my credit score, a few porn sites and password resets to some dating sites. I don't really care if authorities see it because there's nothing remotely illegal involved.
Mr. Tunick does seem like had illegal activities to hide from the article it seems like he was part of some politically motivated group then to make it worse it seems like he folded under pressure and did reveal what he was hiding. This alone is the worst possible thing you either go all the way 1st amendment bare detention and hardship or jst use a non graphene device with nothing on it.
rn graphene is just asking to be detained just get a second device, you just look more guilty than necessary.
graphene is an excellent piece of software im just not convinced the people who are using it are aware of the heat it brings them.
also i can't help but suspect that anyone entering duress pin to wipe the device are innocent. if it was something embarrassing and nothing illegal theres no need to even install graphene.
i can't help but conclude people who are installing graphene are involved in illegal activities when i see the news
99% of people also have an email service that will turn over your entire inbox if required by law.
Don't think GrapheneOS suggests guilt, seeing how they're tracking everyone without a warrant and going after people for things that are very defensible under 1A. Also some people don't want to be subject to Googliness, that's fair. But duress code on top of that... I know the govt can't treat that as guilt, but I personally find it sus.
you really have to go out of your way to figure out how to install graphene and on top of that you have duress code and its pretty much painting a red target on yourself across borders
the authorities dont care about your edward snowden insired views on privacy, they already suspect you and you wipe your device before inspection then they have no choice but to treat you with suspicion
i think that if you were a real hardcore criminal, like a cartel boss,you would not even carry graphene on you, everything would be done through intermediaries who have a chain of people to take the fall.
Well wiping isn't just cause for suspicion, it's actually destroying evidence. He was charged with that, but they couldn't charge him with domestic terrorism. He also had the option to decline unlocking the phone.
Paywalled, but what is the actual charge? Is it some extremely generic "obstructing an investigation" one? The US is quite good about making court documents available on line, if someone can find it.
"In May 2022 the corporate offices of Brasfield & Gorrie in Birmingham, Alabama were vandalized, and the message "Drop Cop City Or Else" was spray-painted on the building."
"On March 5, 2023, dozens of people attacked the Cop City construction site with rocks and firebombs, destroying construction equipment."
Knowingly providing a PIN that would erase evidence is going to get tough in court.
But the man was also hated by the cops because of his activism. They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up.
There is no duty to keep a copy of messages and private data on your phone for the FBI to peruse at its leisure. Quite the opposite, actually (according to the constitution).
It is pretty clear to me that law enforcement conspired to abuse a border crossing to effect basically an unconstitutional search ("fishing expedition"), which it would never have gotten a warrant for.
This is them being spiteful after that whole thing failed. Note how law enforcement basically admits this on the record. The whole thing is a disgrace; every decisionmaker involved in this should be sacked immediately.
Whatever they claimed they needed access for his phone to. Probably nothing serious that would be worth more than a fine, if anything. But now they've got him for deleting evidence, which is pretty bad.
There is no "evidence"; by any reasonable interpretation of that word there would have to be an actual accusation of crime for there to be evidence of one. This was a search predicated on literally no actual basis apart from "we have the right to search your device because we have ultimate power at border passings", essentially just a fishing expedition.
This also doesn't even get to the more important point: If you don't have the contents of the phone you have literally no evidence of a crime being committed, other than the one they invented post-facto: "Deleting data that could hypothetically be incriminating, not in any specific way but just generally, maybe".
That shouldn't be too hard. Get someone from Google or someone with any tech knowledge to explain to the judge how phones normally work, what encryption keys are, the implications of wiping an encryption key, and then get someone to show the difference between entering a normal PIN wrong several times and entering the duress PIN. You just need to convince the jury (or judge, if there is no jury for whatever reason).
People have gone to jail or have been executed for less than a glitch. Theoretically a highly charged particle from space could've messed with exactly the right transistors exactly when entering the correct PIN and trigger the wipe process. There is no way to prove that didn't happen. But you don't need that kind of proof.
Sure buddy. And the uncertainty principle means you can't prove I was at the scene of the crime.
The fact phones don't usually wipe themselves will be plenty good for a judge.
Btw: Regardless of the above I support this guy's right to protect his private data from baseless and unreasonable searches. He should not be charged with a crime.
No, it means there is no general solution to the problem of proving software correct. You can prove if a specific program will halt or not given certain parameters. You cannot write an algorithm that will work to prove if any arbitrary program will halt.
> They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up
funny reading this (don't disagree) and then also reading on HN how China is "bad" this is some gestapo shit but not surprising that it is getting normalised ...
China is strictly worse than the USA when it comes to border controls. That doesn't mean the USA is good or acceptable in any way; these laws are part of the reason why I don't plan on visiting the country. The USA also has much worse laws on the books, like having to give the authorities your social media passwords to check if you're secretly a terrorist (though that doesn't apply to citizens).
Excessive border patrol power has been around in the USA for ages now, it's all part of the post-9/11 package. I don't think many Americans even know they live in a zone where the border police can do shit like this, even if they haven't left the country, as international airports are usually near big cities, and they have a wide border zone around them. This stuff only really makes it into the news when it happens to one of the "good guys".
China is indeed "bad" for the gestapo shit. The difference is that China's gestapo shit comes with benefits for the common man too, whereas in the US the gestapo shit only serves the inner circle at the top of the regime with zero benefits to 99% of the populace.
I always bring two phones when I travel, sometimes more than two, mostly because I’m a mobile engineer so I need devices to test apps on, but also just in case of situation like this.
We can only hope that it eventually gets decided that there can be no such thing as destroying evidence before a judge has initiated the discovery phase of a proceeding, outside of any standing operational requirements like business records.
What about everyone does this at the border. Then what is normalized is deleting your encryption key while entering, they won’t prosecute everyone on their baseless prosecutions. Join in I say, there is no law being broken only scare tactics being applied to prevent this kind of thing. Normalize the act not the consequences.
Ok those who see no problem... Let's just for the sake of argument concede that you have never had any right to privacy while crossing the border and so there is no cause for outrage here. Guy did it to himself.
How was this different from deleting the same data the day before instead of on the spot?
The argument goes that the crime is essentially knowingly depriving the police of something they want.
The problem isn't that the phone was blank, it's that it wasn't blank, and then when the authorities wanted to look at it, and you caused it to be blank to thwart them.
Ok well all of those supposed key differentiating factors also apply the day before travelling.
You knew you would be crossing a border, and knew you might be searched there, and knew you would have no right to object or resist, and so as a direct response to that knowledge, took action to deprive those authorities of something you knew they might want, by wiping your phone the day before travelling and carrying no data with you into the zone of inhumanity.
This would probably still "work" today and might have worked for him this time, but that's just luck and progression. If more people do that and the jackboots start to identify it as the source of their inconvenience, what prevents them from declaring that illegal? It's all exactly the same argument.
All it needs is to become a more common practice, and then it gets a handy name like "pre-cleansing", and then you can be charged for the crime of pre-cleansing.
Maybe we should just make it illegal to own tech that you even have the power to delete yourself in the first place. If you want to wipe your device, you can't because it's not allowed to run custom software, and even if you simply physically destroy it, they at least know it happened (and where and when) from the loss of telemetry and they have the non optional cloud storage anyway.
Then we can charge people for destroying evidence by knowingly avoiding generating it in the first place. You are guilty of the crime of attempting to evade prosecution by not commiting a crime.
That's where we are already. The current case has exactly that same absurdity.
Anyone that is surprised by this or somehow thinks this is new clearly hasn't crossed the border a whole lot. I grew up in a city along the US/Canada border. You don't fuck around with US Customs (or Canadian) agents. My cousin (not always so friendly) pissed off a US Customs agent (in the 90s mind you) and they promptly took his car and disassembled much of it looking for non-existent drugs. When they put it back together it was never the same. Their job is to be suspicious, 99.999% of the time people are completely innocent. But let 1 bad person through and it's Customs' fault for whatever bad thing they do. Not an easy job. Not an excuse for how they can misbehave either.
Is it right? It makes no difference, Customs can make your life miserable, that's just the reality of it, always has been and it can't have gotten better in recent times.
You hate pedophilia? You are a terrorist. You hate those who burn down mosques and churches? You are a terrorist. You hate the 50 oligarchs that rule over us? You are a terrorist. If everyone is a terrorist nowadays, might as well act like one.
I left this comment 2 weeks ago on a youtube short on the subject:
"I have an opinion on the legal matter. But I think it's worth noting that destroying the data was a categoric strategic blunder by the defendant. If you don't destroy the data, but just don't provide the password, they might never be able to recover the data, perhaps with the exception of a multi million dollar cryptographic attack.
Destroying the data is a strategic mistake even if there's a mildly strong case that deleting the data is a crime, as it provides no benefit at the cost of increasing the risk of being sentenced for evidence tampering. I personally am not appealed by the grapheneOS thing, but I can't see any case were that feature would be beneficial, it sounds like a shitty technology."
To me this is evidence tampering, and again to me, it's a great law to have that evidence cannot be destroyed. But even if you argue that it's a bad law, and even if you argue that this was not evidence tampering, you have to concede that it IS the law and that it IS highly likely that courts will find it to be evidence tampering, finally that there is little value to destroying encrypted evidence. It's a categoric legally strategic mistake.
And GrapheneOS is a dumb product by consequence for this matter, unless you are like some high level spy whose security model is being tortured or dissapeared instead of being put to jail.
Isn't that an illegal law though? After all you are not required to aid in the prosecution against yourself, aka you don't have to incriminate yourself. So such a law means that the courts now ignore that law/amendment. Doesn't this make it illegal on this point alone?
Either way the USA needs to stop abusing its citizens. The people need to take back control over the court system. Way too much abuse is happening here. Land of the free no more.
> Oh, they may well give you bad time if your phone looks like a burner with too little content.
Issuing 'burner phones' and laptops to staff visiting countries such as China or the USA is now SOP for many companies handling sensitive data, including mine.
This is not... advice. But if anyone's actually going to do this, the method that's worked for me...
A couple weeks before your trip, factory reset whatever burner phone you're planning on using and swap your SIM card over. Install a few basic apps you wouldn't mind them looking through. Enable hotspot/tethering, and connect your other phone via Wi-Fi.
For a couple of weeks, use the burner as much as you can with what is available on it. When you're driving, us the maps app for GPS. Make and receive some calls, ignore some spam calls. Read the news. Get a few inane text messages conversations going, etc.
When you travel, leave your regular phone at home and take the burner. When it's searched at the border, it has enough activity to pass most initial smell tests. If asked, you dropped your other phone and didn't have time to get it fixed before your trip, this is one a friend lent you.
This has worked for me. Never _actually_ into anything illegal, but just apparently had a suspicious vibe about me or something because every time I crossed the border into or out of the country I was spending 4-5 hours getting searched. Didn't need someone going through my entire life going back decades every time--once was enough.
So what, don’t do anything to protect yourself because there’s no hope? Give up?
Believe it or not, due process still generally exists and most people still benefit from taking precautions to protect themselves. That’s not to imply that things are great or that we aren’t in a time of declining civil liberties.
Seriously, there is something wrong with privacy doomers.
And yet this distant possibility doesn’t seem to happen very often to citizens, as long as we still have courts. Not that actual abuses should be trivialized.
This comes across as fearmongering to keep people from protecting themselves.
That isn’t true. They can detain you briefly for questioning at the border, but if there is no crime then you will be released. Feel free to dig into historical court cases about border detention if you disagree.
If you get charged with a crime, things are very different.
Nope, no disagreement. I just see your take as very optimistic.
There is no court at the border. If the agent decides you're going to jail, you're going to jail. The decision may be reversed/corrected after, but it's still going to be a big, expensive problem for you and you _are_ going to be detained for a time.
Not to mention walking up with an empty phone and telling the agent to "fuck off" when they ask about it sure sounds eerily similar to the facts of the case in the linked article. I'd wager that's a good way to land an obstruction charge.
If the abuse is egregious, you have a decent chance of pro bono representation or a lawsuit payout. In any case, activism comes with personal risk, and part of activism is accepting that risk while attempting to protect others. (This person was an activist, and it’s likely that they wanted to confine the damage to themselves.)
For the second part, having an empty phone is not a crime, and being arrested for this would be a major scandal. The tech press and political outlets would be all over it. It’s generally a good idea to avoid directly antagonizing border guards, though.
They won't unless you are already on "their list" My phone basically looks like a burner phone, I do not use social media, do not install apps, my iphone fits (with room to spare) all "apps" on a "single page." I just call and text from my phone and have a browser and maps and that is basically it.
Years ago I chatted with a border guard from another country about their job (while they were not working). Not having a phone nowadays would be considered "strange" enough to flag you. If you're not a citizen of said country, it could even dramatically increase the odds of disallowing you entry. Often this would prevent you returning for a set number of years.
At the end of the day, it's always best to just not have anything "bad" on your devices. People have been caught up for all numbers of "innocent" reasons (pictures of their kids in the bathtub, ancient photos in their albums of themselves doing illegal things such as drugs or underage drinking, text messages or browser history disparaging politicians the border guard may support, porn in your history) that can give a border guard in a bad mood good reason to ruin your day.
I personally don't want my phone data hoovered in and analyzed or marked, even though I don't really have anything to hide. I don't care enough to do anything about it, but if I did I would probably have a second travel phone with a curated amount of data, apps, accounts, etc.
I'm a bit mystified why anyone would bring an electronic device over an international border with anything that could be construed, fairly or not, as evidence of criminal behavior.
I don't agree with all this and this increasingly fascist regime but... this was the most predictable outcome. Consider these two scenarios.
1. You factory reset your phone before entering the US and give it to CBP blank. There's nothing to find;
2. You have a self-destruct PIN like this guy did and give it CBP so it destroys the phone's contents.
Tech people will say that these two things are functionally the same. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the law works. If you factory reset your phone first with the intention of restoring it after entry, that's completely fine (legally). You could've factory reset that for any reason. But as soon as an officer wants to search your phone, now you're engaging in evidence destruction (spoliation). The destruction to the phone's contents was done in response to an unfortunately lawful search.
Even if you don't want to factory reset your phone, you can probably just delete (or even log out) of key apps. They can still get messages but if you're so concerned about that, use WhatsApp or whatever.
None of this should be necessary but we are where we are. But whatever you do, don't use a self-destruct PIN if you don't want to be charged with a felon and likely to be found guilty.
A court has not yet determined whether the use of the duress PIN/password was legal. There's definitely no consensus among legal experts of it being illegal as you're portraying it. The US has strong legal protections against self-incrimination and unreasonable searches despite erosion of how much people's rights are respected.
A factory reset done in anticipation of a search is not as different from using a duress feature as you believe it is. Forensics software would have clearly identified the device was recently factory reset. It would provide another defense argument by arguing it was wiped for another reason, but whether that would be believed by a court is unknown. It would make a difference if there was a good argument about why it was done, but it isn't necessary for this to have been done instead for wiping the device to have been legal.
Once he was in the situation already, the best move was very likely refusing to provide the PIN/password indefinitely and only talking to them to demand access to lawyer. There are strong protections against data extraction and it's highly unlikely they would have been able to get the data from it. Refusing to provide a PIN/password is protected under the 5th amendment in the US and these rights do exist at the border. They can turn away a non-citizen but they can't refuse entry to an American citizen because they won't provide a PIN/password. They could waste a lot of his time but he'd get access to a lawyer and would get released. They could make a court case over demanding the PIN/password and they'd nearly certainly lose. He'd likely spend months or even years without getting back his phone of course.
If they had a video recording of him entering the PIN/password from somewhere, they could have used that to get the data. By using the duress PIN/password, he prevented it. It was probably not necessary to keep the data safe, but that's unknown.
With only a tiny bit of preparation time, rebooting or powering off the device would have gotten it into Before First Unlock state without the locked device auto-reboot timer needing to complete. In Before First Unlock state, a decent random 6 digit PIN is enough for the data stored protected with it to be highly secure without an extremely sophisticated secure element exploit. If the device had a strong passphrase, then no level of sophisticated exploits would recover that data.
> A factory reset done in anticipation of a search is not as different from using a duress feature as you believe it is. Forensics software would have clearly identified the device was recently factory reset. It would provide another defense argument by arguing it was wiped for another reason, but whether that would be believed by a court is unknown.
This is where machine-like personal consistency is deeply important to opsec. Not just for technical reasons, but for legal reasons also.
If you wipe your phone before every national border crossing and restore it after every border crossing as a part of your standard procedure for travel, it will be much harder for a prosecutor to argue that you have ever done so in anticipation of some particular search. If your employer's security policy mandates doing so, that is even more evidence against anticipating a specific search. If a large body of infosec/cybersecurity professionals advise a wipe/reset of your phone before any and all international travel, that is further evidence for defense.
Is there are legal difference between you entering the duress PIN and you giving the border control officers a PIN, which may be the duress PIN, and then they enter the PIN? Does that chance from you potentially destroying evidence, to the person entering the PIN destroying the evidence?
I used a very specific word for a very specific reason. That word was "spoliation". It is a legal word. It means destroying evidence but it means more than that.
If you're the subject of a lawful search and you destroy evidence rather than handing it over, that's spoliation. It has legal consequences. Courts are allowed to assume that whatever was destroyed was detrimental to you or your case. You can be charged with it as well. That's basically what happened here.
Consider this example: many companies have an email retention policy where emails will be automatically deleted after a period. I've heard of cases where this has been as little as 14 days. Typically though it's 1-5 years. One of the reasons companies do this is so discovery can't go and dredge up something really old in a lawsuit.
If this is a company policy then that's actually fine (ignoring any regulations or legislation tabout required retention).
Once you get subpoenaed you may get a hold on your email. The company is then required to retain it reagardless of this policy. If you then delete an email, that too is spoliation.
Do you see the difference? CBP can search your device. As soon as they request it, deleting the contents, regardless of what it contains is a crime. Wiping your phone before every border crossing as standard practice is not.
Spoliation requires a situation where a legal case is reasonably foreseeable. It's reasonable to ask exactly what that foreseeable legal case would be in this situation.
"We will jail if you don't comply" is questionable grounds. There has to be explicit suspicion of something specific. Otherwise it's a fishing expedition, and questionably lawful.
Do the TSA and CBP get more latitude? Yes, but only up to a point. And that point is constantly being challenged.
It is not the same as resisting a lawful search. That's more likely to be obstruction.
It also not the same as deleting evidence when you're on notice that a case against you is incoming. That is legally much more straightforward.
Of course the reality is this government DGAF about freedom or constitutional rights. It has already shot people in the streets in cold blood for no good reason.
So this is a risky move.
But... there's been significant judicial pushback against overreach.
Ultimately it's a constitutional issue, but different states have different policies and attitudes to that.
They didn't get the data from his phone and will likely lose the case against him. They probably wanted data to go after other people and those people were protected against it.
It was likely unnecessary to use the duress PIN/password. He likely would have been better off simply refusing to provide the PIN/password. He could have rebooted or powered off the device before going through but even without that it would have automatically rebooted itself after 18 hours by default, or a lower time if he had configured one.
With a lot more preparation he could have done an encrypted backup, wiped the device and restored it later but that's very inconvenient.
Y'know, makes me wonder why Democrates didn't disband ICE and CBP when they had control over the Congress and the government. I mean, they knew those agencies would be used in precisely this way, yet did nothing anyhow.
Democrats built the blueprint for ICE's deportation program and architected the law that enabled it.
Clinton's IIRAIRA bill literally introduced expedited removal procedures and created the concept of 'administrative warrants', routinely used by CBP/ICE today.
Without the IIRAIRA, removal would be substantially harder.
IIRIRA was not a 'Clinton' bill. It was initially drafted by Lamar Smith (r) of Texas (HR 2202) and subsequently attached to an appropriations bill (HR 2610), and passed with a bipartisan veto-proof majority.
Huh? He signed it and evangelized it heavily, speaking about his strong support for the bill.
He said the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy". In the 1996 State of the Union he strongly condemned illegal immigration and touted a 50% increase in border controls, while pledging to use federal government contract steering power to punish businesses hiring them.
How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.
Some notable Democrats voted for the bill, too. Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden.
Huh yourself. I'm sure you understand what it means that it was introduced and cosponsored by >100 Republicans, and what a veto-proof majority means. It was passed just a couple months before an election, it was pretty natural that Clinton would go along with it to avoid being attacked as 'soft on crime'.
How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.
Sure...if you believe it's common for American presidents' signature legislation to be introduced by the opposition party and get 5-10x more support from them than his own party. It passed with 370 R to 37 D votes in the House and 84 to 15 in the Senate.
How does saying the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy" mean he had nothing to do with the bill and it was not his bill, despite evangelizing it repeatedly and signing the bill into law along with hundreds of Democrats?
From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948
-------- Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law
I get that the political system could be better, but having been to places that actually are not governed by the rule of law, I can assure you that the US is doing quite well on that front. When there is actually no rule of law, consequences include:
+ entire regions / areas where merely visiting those areas invites a highly non-trivial (think, more than 10% chance) chance of being kidnapped or murdered
+ every neighborhood and business has substantial, often military-grade private security
+ if credit exists at all, it exists outside of any formal banking structure and will have interest rates that are north of 30% APR, sometimes north of 100% APR. I've genuinely seen interest rates on credit as high as 2% *per day*, and these are rates that the local population is willing to pay for certain short term expenses (like food)
+ families that maintain good social relationships with the local police/militants/whoever-has-guns live substantially better lives than people without good social connections to the local authorities.
+ Travelers are told on repeat: "it's really not safe here for non-locals, you should stay inside and also reconsider being in this part of the world at all"
+ If the travelers are there for business reasons, they are probably assigned 24/7 armed guards (as many as 4 guards per traveler, each guard carrying full-auto weapons) by the locals, provided for free.
And while the US maybe has a neighborhood here or there which might be like this, every part of every major city in the country has more rule of law than the above.
You will never convince those who think the US is a state of lawlessness that the US is (mostly) a lawful, free and prosperous place. They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like. They've never experienced anything even remotely close to it. It's like someone who grew up in the tropics and complains that they're "freezing to death!" because it's 50F. Someone from the arctic tells them about what real cold is like... they literally cannot understand.
> They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like.
I doubt that most Americans comprehend what is living in a well managed citizens-first country were people are represented and many laws are passed just because the working class wants them.
If you compare the USA with the worst places on earth, then it is a good place. I hope that Americans aim higher and want to compare themselves with the best places to live in the world.
What are those best places in the world?
I usually compare the US to Switzerland. I live in Boston, but was born in Lugano (southern tip of Switzerland).
Switzerland has an excellent quality of life, far better education system, remarkable stability, and amazingly good healthcare. The companies pay people well, give them adequate time off, and has 16+ weeks of maternity leave.
There are some pretty significant downsides in Switzerland, too. It's highly conservative, hard to make friends with the Swiss, and fairly expensive, depending on where you live.
We live in Boston because of family. It's a decent enough place to live, and from my perspective, just about the closest that the US gets to Europe.
I think Minnesota and Maine feel somewhat European in government.
I really wouldn't know. I haven't had any real exposure to either. I visited Maine once. It seemed nice.
What you describe is a goal we should absolutely strive for - and one we are clearly falling short of. At the same time it's foolish to describe the US as being on the opposite side of the spectrum. I dare say it's even dangerous, as it encourages a sense of hopelessness and disregard for laws and civility.
Rule of law is when the state's power is effectively limited by law.
Rule of law is not about order nor safety
Rule of law is when laws as written by legislators are executed by the government as written and, when appropriate, judged by the judiciary as written, and at each step the words as written supersede the whims and feelings of the people involved. It doesn't imply that the state can't do anything meaningful because it's so hamstrung.
Statements like "the US does not have the rule of law" are laughable Reddit-tier comments that just make me sad for the current state of HN.
The president and his cronies are openly immune to any recourse from the law at the moment. They are doing widespread and overt corruption and insider trading on a daily basis on scales that have never been seen in human history before. There is not any attempt at stopping that by any organ of government.
Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.
These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.
The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.
Mostly you should assess rule of law by threat to you and people you know and not by what it seems like other people are able to get away with.
Yes, a big part of the idea is that laws are meant to also apply to the powerful, but it's difficult to accurately assess situations that are far away from you.
What a nonsensical statement. From a distance it’s pretty clear that there is no rule of law anymore in the USA. Yes, it’s partially functioning, but that’s not the rule.
So I can go out and kill my neighbor without having to worry about consequences, then? I mean, just say the word: he's been pissing me off recently.
I dunno. How rich are you ? And do you happen to play college football ? That would help.
And do you drive a car? Car owners get a (relative) free pass because "accidents happen".
Do you work for ICE?
First they came for those that were far away from me and I did not speak out because… I didn’t know them?
U.S. democracy is still very strong and freedoms are protected, when compared with with other superpowers like China, Russia. My personal metric for comparison is: in those countries if you would make public jokes about the leader of the country to a large audience, at best you would end in prison, at worst you and your family would be death.
Dictators expect that people fear them, they control by fear and terror. If you can make jokes about leaders you show that you don't fear them, you show that they don't control you.
But the increase in corruption in US goverment indicates slow progress towards authoritarianism. This can be slow process, it can take years or decades, as was seen with Hitler and Stalin.
ICE excessive force use, encouraged by Trump and welcomed in large part of US population, could be the next step. This piece by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller describes the progression of authoritarianism:
No, momentary abuses of power do not mean the US has no rule of law. The law is what put Trump in office in the first place.
If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE. Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
That’s how the US got here in the first place. Not much of what the president and his friends and family are new to the US, now its more daring and freely talked about and normalized, like in a state where there’s no rule of law. You don’t need to be glued to doomscrolling to learn that a government is turning laws to punish terrorists inwards but you need to be glued to something to know its been in the making for over 20 years.
Excuse me. The law(14th Amendment section 3 specifically) clearly prohibited Trump from being eligible for federal office. That the Supreme Court abrograted state's rights to run elections free of federal interference, not to mention the lack of recusal given the blatant conflicts of interest, is a separate matter altogether.
> Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
Is that your threshold for "rule of law"? And I'm sorry, but what separates ICE from a roving gang setting up shakedown checkpoints, and executing at point blank range with no repercussions dissenters?
Define rule.
> If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE.
This is such an outrageously privileged and out-of-touch statement. Maybe YOU wouldn't know about Trump and ICE if you didn't read the news, but that's your personal microcosm. Please be more mindful about damage and harm done when you're ascribing your personal worldview onto others' actual reality.
> The president and his cronies are openly immune to any recourse from the law at the moment.
How do you reconcile that proposition with the observable reality of the courts routinely blocking the current administration's excesses?
It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals. All the while the abuses continue. How many years do you suppose we'll have to wait to see the Trump family subject to tax law?
> It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals.
Interesting. Again, how do you reconcile that theory with the with the large number of court cases involving Trump's specific actions that managed to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, leading to many clear rulings against Trump, all within the first year and a half of his current term?
A year and a half is a long time to cause a lot of harm. Way, way too long.
Why can a single person do so much damage, if only temporarily? Are you in a monarchy or something?
When the president can just pick the judges he wants and then have them change laws that have existed for decades on a whim, any kind of meaningful rule of law is absent.
Yeah and the US doesn't currently have that.
Reddit-tier comment, says the guy whos never had his face smashed into the hood of a car by a sheriff deputy. We got something in the US and it often wears robes and badges, but it's not law written by legislatures.
When you can't trust your highest court is impartial the whole system is untrustworthy. Unfortunately the US system is designed in such a way that the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president).
> the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president)
Do you really think that judges that have to run for reelection every few years can be more trusted to rule on cases fairly, according to the law, rather than bending to popular whims?
Yes.
The emphasis is on “more” trusted.
Supreme court justice positions should be limited to around thirteen (or some other prime number) years and should have mandatory cognitive capacity tests given yearly that are videotaped and broadcast live. The tests should be written by a nonpartisan panel of doctors chosen randomly from an applicant pool like a jury and refreshed every five years.
Look at the UK for a much better system. It's got problems too but there's no concept of stacking the court in your favour because you were lucky enough someone died while you were in power.
The US just has a bad system. It’s easily influenced by money and politics and that’s exactly why the rest of the world considers the US a ruled by money instead of the law.
Man while reading your points i was thinking your last sentence will be a sarcastic note that implies that these points all do actually apply to the US. Of course the US as a whole is not comparable to other parts of the world where these points absolutely apply but points 1,2,4 and 5 seem to apply to a significant extent.
What parts of the United States can you visit which have a >10% chance of being kidnapped or murdered? That means for every 100 visitors, 10 people don't come home. I honestly don't think that applies to a single neighborhood in the entire country. If murder/kidnapping rates get remotely close to that high, the FBI steps in.
I also can't think of any US cities where neighborhoods have military grade armed security. Sure, there are places where every local business has an armed guard, but that's not really the same as hiring a trained private militia. The armed guards are for protecting against petty theft, not for protecting against organized crime.
On point four, I'm not sure if there are places in the US where minorities need to maintain relationships social relationships with cops as a survival mechanic, but it certainly doesn't apply to most cities, and I don't think it applies to anyone who is white.
On point five, I don't think you understand. There are parts of the world where having white skin will get you, quite literally, reminders every 15 minutes "hey it's really not safe for you here, do you want to hang out inside my shop while I call you a taxi?" No part of the US is like that for travelers. I know there are occasionally ICE raids that make the news, but "hey you strictly cannot be outside without a local chaperone" is just not a thing in the US.
My wife got lost in LA and ended up in Compton. (2 decades ago).
She absolutely had people tell her every fifteen minutes she was not safe there and several offered to wait with her while she ordered a taxi.
Except none of the taxis ever came so she had to take a bus and a guy came with her just to make sure she didn’t try getting off at the wrong stop.
The cops were dressed like SWAT with what looked like full autos (but may not have been) and very forcefully told her she should not be there.
2 decades ago
this sounds like an absolutely wholesome story where multiple strangers donate their attention and time to help somebody who was not a victim in any way but just merely lost.
I wouldn't want my wife lost in Compton either but if the good guys outnumbered the bad guys by Inf% then it must not really be that bad. What would happen if it were Kinshasa instead of Compton.
and now 1000 sqft home in Compton is 600K
Ah yes, famously one of the worst neighborhoods in the country in that time. Yet she could still drive 10 miles and be perfectly safe
Point 1: I said "to an extent" but i concede that it is nowhere close to 10%, but isn't murder state law? The FBI does not step in for that or does it? And the homicide clearance rate has dropped to 50% (72% in 1980) in recent years, for half of the murder nobody is ever held accountable.
Point 2: I was thinking that the most heavily armed private citizenry counts as "private security". More guns than people. Also far more private security guards than cops. To me that is exactly what "private security everywhere" looks like.
Point 4: To be honest i think point 3 actually applies to any place anywhere. Someone who knows the local police gets away with far more shit in my small german village. But "doesn't apply to anyone who is white" clearly is a sign of lack of rule of law. Laws should be race-independent and statistics show that in the US it's anything but.
Point 5: No chaperone-level warnings, but the UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan all issue standing travel advisories about US gun violencem, the UK literally tells citizens "try not to walk through quieter areas alone, especially at night." And there were recommendations i got against business travel to the US especially with company issued equipment.
I mean, man, currently the US is not looking good from my point of view. I have a bunch of american friends who say immigration and everything else is ruining Germany. But looking at the stats it's looking quite okay:
Germany vs US: - Murder: 0.91 vs 5.7 per 100k
- Rape: 14 vs 40 per 100k
- Violent crime overall: 253 vs 380 per 100k
- Murder/homicide clearance: ~95% vs 50%
- Private security guard to police ratio: 0.9:1 vs 1.9:1
- Police killings: 10 vs 1100 per year
- Incarceration rate: 67 vs 600 per 100k
The highest incarceration rate in the developed world, ~4% of the world's population, ~25% of its prisoners. Are Americans just incredibly prone to being criminals? No. The crime rates above show the violent crime gap is ~1.5x, not 9x, and property crime is comparable or even lower than Germany's. ~95% of convictions are plea bargains extracted under threat of a "trial penalty", hundreds of thousands sit in jail pre-trial because they can't afford cash bail, and sentences run far longer for the same offenses. The US locks up 9x more people because it chooses to, not because Americans are more criminal. A state that imprisons its own population at Cuba and Rwanda rates while half its murders go unsolved, sells bail to the highest bidder, and runs on guilty pleas instead of trials. I would not correct anyone if they told me the US was not governed by the rule of law.
Low standards for you doesn't change the higher standards the US is designed to have. People voted very badly by not rejecting republicans. That does not mean those who did not should give up on restoring higher standards. States do have powers too.
While there are things less than ideal in the US, this is absolutely not the case.
The "Rule of Law" applies to everybody, including the President (recent decisions of the supreme court not withstanding - though they are very unfortunate). You have provisions for the freedom of press, freedom of speech, to be free from unreasonable searches, a reliable court system, etc, etc.
Searches at the border are murky legal territory, and I think that there is a problem here. You may also argue that the president and senate have too much power, or that gerrymandering is a serious problem (which it is). But from these you cannot conclude a general lawlessness.
(I'm from North-Western Europe, living in the US for a few decades now, so I feel that I have at least some data to compare.)
It's governed by the wicked version of Anglo-Saxxon law.
In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.
In other cases, it's insanity.
In normal World, criminals have rights for any kind of defense. And that's good, because government have power to make anyone "criminal".
Total breach of privacy by US government is a mirror to shitload of problems US has.
Europe js heading same direction (both the problems & government solutions).
I think even by the second word you're outside bicycling, US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people.
> In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.
What on earth are you talking about, "victims" definitively have rights in most European countries, but the fact you seemingly think there is one "Continental law system in Europe" clearly shows you have zero idea what you're talking about, Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...
Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)
> US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people
> Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)
Right.
Who currently governs the US who isn't rich? Or do you disagree with that it's a bad idea that only rich people govern? I understand you want me to say nothing, that much is clear, but I don't understand what specific part you disagree with though.
> Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...
The Napoleonic Code is indeed pervasive across the continent. And, ignoring that, we have EU law, which is supra-statal law that most certainly and de facto has come to replace/impose on "local" laws.
https://lawshun.com/article/what-is-the-relationship-between... explains the complex relation between EU law and national law.
in a nutshell, EU law takes precedence over conflicting national laws in areas where the EU has competence.
While EU law is directly applicable or requires transposition into national law, member states retain autonomy in areas outside EU competence.
National courts are obligated to interpret domestic law in line with EU law.
National Constitutional Court/Supreme court, occasionally challenge EU law’s supremacy.
They can also just ignore it because the EU has no army, only economic retaliation is possible. Hungary did this for years.
"Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing"
You should make this as your life credo. Change "sometimes" into "always" till you learn something.
It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same. And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.
And your bullshit about law working for the rich in US is really stupid. Extremly rich are almost untouchable everywhere in the World. Rich have a fighting chance of getting better outcome. And poor people have chance tk seek justice against roughly equal opponent. This is not about US, this is about how World works.
> You should make this as your life credo. Change "sometimes" into "always" till you learn something.
Somewhat of a paradox no? I'm guessing your belief here is that I learned something by what you just told me, so me not saying until now when I read your comment, is exactly what you wanted?
> It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same. And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.
If you're under the belief that all countries in Europe have the same laws across borders because many countries have a civil law system, I'm not sure what to tell you, that's not how it works, and many countries have very different law systems, even if they come from the same origin. Neither would I say that countries "adopt EU legislation", but I guess that's a technicality. Usually you'd say that the countries implement their own laws based on the directives the European Commission comes up. But again, borderline nitpick, maybe better I don't mention this at all lest y'all get stuck on this particular point...
> This is not about US, this is about how World works.
Yeah, let me know when you understand how the entire world works friend ;) I won't claim to know that, although I do know home. But again, have fun, surely you'll get close! :)
6yo kids with average IQ can master Google SE.
Guess you'll never understand what is Continental law system. Or what is the meaning of word principle. Or what transposition is in terms of EU legislation.
Keep whining kiddo, that's the best proof that as always, your desperate attempt to portray yourself as someone knowledgeable, failed.
You can again give me one pathetic downvote ... that's your ultimate weapon. That will sure teach me a lesson for disrespecting big LLM gangsta with 96GB VRAM ... and all of sudden, crying for not being able to see tables in comments because all he has is mobile device.
Keep living your online fiction, slumdog millionaire.
Huh, that's different, a comment filled with just supposed insults? For what? :P Why are you so angry about it all? Why does nothing in your comment have anything to do with the topic at large? So many questions, and I hope, such an interesting reply to come.
> criminal's have rights, victims doesn't
Wait, you want to eliminate innocent until proven guilty?
> "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't"
Straw man argument. Everybody has rights in the EU, including people suspected of being criminals, and of course victims.
Arguing that in the EU victims have no rights is insulting for anyone reading your comment. That far-right view of the world is false and it is just trying to misinform and create hate.
A UN declared right is not legally binding in general AFAIK. Assuming I'm correct, your comment is non sequitur.
Not that I agree at all what happened.
This is the kind of comment that is considered informative and acceptable?
Also the legal system is not autistic. It's based on vibes more than anyone wants to admit.
Except that the UDHR is not the rule of law.
It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"
That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.
People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.
It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".
Not necessarily the same in every nation, but any treaty ratified by Congress in the United States has the same status as any law passed by Congress.
It is subject to judicial review, but has equal standing.
So the US cannot "violate [it] at will".
Sure it can, just like it can violate laws passed by Congress.
What country does not have a law against destruction of evidence? It seems like arresting a person for a law that most countries have is following the rule of law.
Evidence of what? Had a crime been charged when the search was undertaken? You can't just declare things evidence in order to get unfettered access to them.
That is not how any of this works. Destruction of evidence is a crime regardless if you have been charged with a crime. This is the case under both federal and Georgia law.
at least not by universal human rights, apparently
At this point it is neither
Or basic humanity
Yes. We need to respect all laws. I am strongly uphold the Peruvian Naval Law here in Michigan.
Judges have been stopping hundreds of things Trump has tried to do.
Lower courts.
SCOTUS has overwhelmingly sided with the Administration. Not always, but quite often.
This isn’t part of any US statute (Australia doesn’t incorporate UN nonsense into our national or local laws, either).
Try again.
The US is currently governed by a dictator propped up by an oligarchy that can only do that because of the Citizens United supreme court decision. Until Citizens United is mitigated, and that appears to be starting to happen as states make laws that state you can't be on the ballot in their state if you take large, anonymous campaign donations from people who will want, and get, a return on their investment. Hawaii is either considering, or has passed just such a law. We don't even need a plurality of states to make similar laws, just the right ones. Look at a chart of campaign spending prior to, and following the Citizens United decision. Spoiler alert, it looks like a hockey stick standing upright.
Bribery and collusion existed well before Citizen's United, notably through shell PACs. Now there is a clear methodology that is less troublesome. Maybe behavior was amplified, but I doubt it.
An elected dictator with a nearing term limit. America continues to innovate!
One I belive has no intention of leaving office, and is trying to prevent the midterm elections from happening. Since the founding of the US, no elections have been delayed, or missed. Not once. Not during WWII, not after 9/11, never.
The failure that allowed trump to happen stems from one thing. Lack of imagination. The system in the US assumes that all of the politicians are at least attempting to argue in good faith. trump is more like a hurricane. he rolled in, fucked everthing up, and will roll out.
After November when the Democrat party has control of the upper and lower houses of congress, there are going to be investigations, grand jury indictments, and people will go to prison. They will also begin the work of closing some of the loopholes that were used to bypass how the government is supposed to operate.
Competitive authoritarianism is a closer term that IR people use.
Putin also had a nearing term limit, but he found a transparent way around it.
He didn't have "Putin next election year" merch for it, so I guess you can say this is innovation.
Citizens United is a scapegoat here. The people genuinely want what they voted for.
No citizen voted for Citizens United. So it's inaccurate to say that we did.
Citizens United was a decision by an unelected group of federal judges we call the Supreme Court when a case was brought before them to determine if chump could have Navy Seal Team 6 assinate a political opponent. They ruled, that yeah, he can. Supreme court justices are appointed for life and have no oversight or ethical restrictions.
They are bound by duty to be impartial. They are not.
The Supreme court is not supposed to MAKE law, that's the job of Congress, they are supposed to interpret the law. The Citizens United supreme court decision made new law, but it was made by people that were not elected by the citizens of this country. They are not acting in good faith, and are clearly in it to help chump.
But the people generally seem to want whatever the person who spends the most money on media says they should want.
Harris rose over twice as much money as Trump in 2024.
Maybe you are right, and it's a scapegoat here. CU was and continues to be a disaster for this country, and I don't think enough attention can be brought to it until it is mitigated.
Everybody of any means around the world seems to be eager to invest in this country not governed by the rule of law
Was this arbitrary?
What would be non-arbitrary case where border patrol would need to check your telephone to be sure about safety it provides?
Yes. People here imagining workarounds based on automatic wipe, encryption, etc. should rather acknowledge that their country is slowly drifting to a fascist state.
Your tech tricks are childish. Act like adults. Take responsibility, make decisions, take action, gather support.
I'm not in the US, but say I was. I'm fully on board that the country is slowly (or not so slowly) drifting into becoming a fascist state. Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? What amount of taking responsibility, making decisions, taking action and gathering support is gonna help in that situation?
Technological workarounds which leave federal agents unable to search my phone isn't gonna fix the slide into fascism. But it might make my trip back home more comfortable. Activism against fascism isn't gonna make my trip back home more comfortable. But it might play a role in fighting the slide into fascism.
Hell, activist work to fight the slide into fascism might be the reason why I would rather not have my phone search by federal agents at the airport.
Individual problem require individual solutions, systemic problems require systemic solutions, and both kinds of solutions are valuable because both kinds of problems are real. Most people make the mistake of proposing individual solutions to systemic problems. You make the mistake of dismissing individual solutions to individual problems.
(I have also intentionally ignored here whether these solutions will actually work. I'm guessing some could, most would not. "I ran out of battery on my phone and didn't bring a laptop, sorry" would probably work. Some complicated cryptographic setup which "technically doesn't erase the data but leaves it inaccessible" probably wouldn't work; the federal agent wouldn't recognize the difference.)
> Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do?
Don't take your phone and/or other devices you don't want to have searched. It's the advice routinely given to those planning a trip from the rest of the world to the US.
That's another technical workaround. A good one, when possible, but it doesn't exactly fix fascism.
Fair enough. It's fine as long as people don't forget that fixing individual problems won't fix systematic problems; it would be like curing the symptoms, not the root cause.
If you want to beat fascism, use the fascists to beat it; not angry crying college kids who are openly loyal to Stalin.
That stunt ten years ago failed for a reason.
I have no idea why you are talking about Stalinist college kids all of a sudden.
All countries (all hierarchies) drift toward fascism. It's a historically and demonstrably effective way to consolidate power. The time to act is always, regardless if you're scared today or not.
The UDHR is a non-binding declaration - in and of itself, it has no legal force.
The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution is more legally relevant, but part of the function of courts is to carve out exceptions to laws like that for law enforcement purposes, so practically speaking such provisions are much less absolute than their wording tends to imply.
Generally you can't carve out from a constitution, it is all encompassing. You can reinterpret perhaps but "carve outs" are only by amendment to the constitution. It's a concept called constitutional supremacy. There's generally ranking to laws. Think of a venn diagram with subset circles inside bigger circles.
Constitutional Law > Statutory/Legislative Law > Administrative/Regulatory Law > Case Law/Common Law
such documents are worth only as much as the population wants to, is willing to, and is able to enforce them.
The U.S. is actively hostile to the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for, and has been for a long, long time - now, the mask has come off.
> the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for
What do you imagine the UN stands for? Let's not make the mistake of judging a program by its name or intention and not by its output. Mind you, this is the same UN on whose Human Rights Council sat such eminent proponents of human rights as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba.
Besides, the US historically funded about a third of the UN, out of 193 member states. It's farcical to suggest that the US is "actively hostile" to the thing that wouldn't even exist without its backing.
The UN stands for the UN charter - which the U.S. was a signatory of, of course - but from the 70’s onwards, US support for the UN waned to the point where we are today, where a withdrawal is not inconceivable.
As to what specifically the U.S. has opposed…
The Vienna convention. ICESCR. CEDAW. UNCLOS. Basel convention. Migrant workers convention. Convention on biodiversity. Convention on rights of the child (even North Korea signed this one, but the U.S. opposed it, still does). Comprehensive test ban treaty. Ottawa, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. Convention on cluster munitions. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (separate to the TBT). BBNJ/High seas treaty. Finally, the Paris agreement.
This isn’t even an exhaustive list. Just realised I forgot about the Rome statute and the ICC. Oh and the arms trade treaty. And the framework convention on climate change.
The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations. The U.S. views it as a blunt force instrument to use against others, but disregards its authority in almost all respects.
It’s even codified in the constitution, as passing a UN treaty requires a ⅔ majority of senators present, unlike any other type of legislation which just needs a legislative majority.
Finally, in January this year, the U.S. left 31 entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the HRC.
So, what part of reality is farcical to you?
> The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations.
It's not. It's mostly a U.S. institution. And those 31 entities that you mentioned are expensive and useless to Americans.
Fuck yes man, nuke the children.
I mean we have the 4th amendment here too. But there are exceptions for border control that have been upheld in court.
Why?
Because they haven’t entered the country yet, therefore it’s a different type of jurisdiction with different rules & regulations.
How many miles from the border is this the case?
>arbitrary
Border searches aren't arbitrary. Sure, in the sense you may or may not get searched, but not in the sense that cops come and turn over your house for no reason. Crossing the border, you know some fraction of travellers will get searched, and that the government does so lawfully. Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move, no matter how righteous you feel it is, unless you're doing it as some form of protest.
With that said, I do think searching phones is absolute bullshit, and I'm not arguing in favour of it at all.
Border searches aren't arbitrary when done for the purposes of border security and applied to travelers in a non-arbitrary way. It's pretty clear that CBP agents have a wide discretion to search people at their own whims i.e. arbitrarily.
>that the government does so lawfully
There are many legal question in this case, it's not clear the government acted lawfully. If he'd have arrived in a different federal court district, the search was unlawful because precedent says they need reasonable suspicion.
Not to mention this was a pretext to gather warrantless evidence for the FBI for a domestic investigation and nothing to do with securing the border.
>Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move
Not what he did.
>Not what he did.
Maybe "antagonise" isn't the right word (ESL). By tricking the border agent into wiping the device, you have made him annoyed / angry / look foolish etc. No matter how much you are in the right, you have now given this person, with the power to create a lot of problems for you, the motivation to do so. You have to weigh that against coming home to your wife and children, in time for dinner. That's not fair, but that's reality.
Or maybe you crossed the border, with the intent to create this situation, to get it tried in court. More power to you.
About five years ago, here in Denmark, the government decided that freedom of assembly no longer applied. An activist decided to hold a party for about 10 people, including his lawyer, called the police on himself, and live streamed the whole thing. I can't find whatever became of that case, because search engines can no longer search. His name is Lars Andersen. He's been jailed a lot of times for petty bullshit.
What fraction of travellers get their phones "randomly" searched for child porn specifically, as in this case?
What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.
> What relevance does that have here, though?
It is a moral statement, not a law.
The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.
The UDHR is full of statements that wouldn't even be agreed upon in a room full of people in the US, let alone around the whole world:
> The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Social progressives would strongly disagree.
> Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
Communists would strongly disagree.
> Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Several UN member states that are absolute monarchies would strongly disagree.
We could go on and on. The UDHR is just a distillation of the postwar liberal consensus, voted on by only 58 countries back in 1948. Hardly the stuff that moral authorities are made of.
> > What relevance does that have here, though?
> It is a moral statement, not a law.
How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it?
Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.
It doesn't define it, it discovers it. The UN is where countries find their common ground. If they have none, though, the UN can't impose any.
So the UN discovers morality by counting votes of government representatives of a bunch of countries for a document that was drafted without their input? And this somehow means it's representative of morality?
What relevance does the common ground between countries have to morality? How does the common ground between Turkey and Greece, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and South Korea, China and Japan "discover" morality? Countries almost by definition don't have common ground, the closest they have is contested ground. People may have common ground, but it's somewhat fanciful to suggest that the representatives of the 18 countries who drafted the UDHR somehow was in any position to act as the moral representatives even for the 18 countries they represented.
They were some diplomats, probably all thoroughly immoral people if we somehow ever manage to figure out what the word moral actually meant, which I doubt.
Can you elaborate on this process as you understand it? I just can't quite wrap my head around this. To me, it seems that at best this process will result in something that exactly no person in the world would recognize as moral. A bit like Solomon's proposal to split the baby.
How do you define morality if you think the UN can discover it? Is there any way to check their work? Can I do a test to see if they made a mistake as I can with any other scientific disciple which discovers things about our world? Does their work make some prediction that we can actually check against reality to see if it's true or false?
For exactly the border search scenario, I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs. Imagine booting the phone from a flash drive, making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive, and writing a fresh OS before reaching the border.
There's no deception required to protect sensitive data or avoid the seizure of an expensive phone. Consent to unlocking the phone, refuse to unlock the drive. The drive gets seized and you go on your way (if you're a US citizen entering the USA).
Some time ago, Android with a custom recovery could come close to that, but it was fussy and as far as I know, no longer viable. Increased use of TPMs for storing credentials seems to be at least one of the reasons.
It may be fun to fantasize about these things some times, but there is no technical solution to tyranny. Laws are not like code, intent matters. Ultimately if the intent is that the government wants to see your private data, hiding it in any way will be charged - it doesn't matter if you jump through hoops to avoid this specific instance.
This is a half-truth. In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will. The USA is somewhere in between.
One of the laws that's enforced pretty well in the USA is the protection against unreasonable search. Most of the time, a search requires showing a judge evidence that the search is more likely than not to reveal evidence of a crime. Exceptions are narrow and specific; the government's options to punish someone who refuses to decrypt data at the border are limited to brief detention and seizure of the medium.
Not yet tested is the idea that erasing data on the spot satisfies the purpose of the border search exception, which is to prevent importation of things that are illegal to import. This case might address that question.
Unreasonable search is always under attack though. There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
Edit to add that its also more difficult than it should be to protect and exercise the right against unreasonable search. If a cop knocks on your door its a consent-based interaction. You can simply not respond, but if you do happen to crack the door they can and will look in for any signs to claim as probable cause. Further there are cases where a person stepped out to talk and when they turned around and walked inside the cop slid right in behind them and later claimed in court the open door was implied consent. (I don't have a link to the court docs unfortunately.)
>There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
Sure, but there are also many instances today of evidence getting thrown out in court due to cops not getting a warranty and poisoning the tree and all its fruit. Rights don't just enforce themselves, there are and have to be a number of layers to the onion to help reduce the violation numbers at each stage.
There's also plenty of examples of even if the evidence is thrown out, there's damage to life or property that is never made whole.
I'm personally less concerned with those cases and more concerned with evidence that ultimately is thrown out allowed them to build a case that otherwise would have gone nowhere.
Say they search a vehicle without consent or probable cause and find weed. Then they further investigate the person and find additional evidence they otherwise never would have found. That weed find may get thrown out but it doesn't always nullify the rest of the case, and if the DA is clever they simply wouldn't submit the weed as evidence at all.
Maybe a better example as a half decent defense attorney, or the judge, could get subsequent evidence thrown out there.
A cop pulls you over for a brake light. They decide to go fishing, asking where you're coming from or where you're going, looking for any inconsistency to pull on. Maybe they decide they smell something on your breath.
A well informed person would refuse to ask questions and help ensure the traffic stop can move forward with the ticket, the cop isn't allowed to hold you for longer than required for the initial offense.
Most people when asked questions, though, will answer. Most people asked to take a field sobriety test will oblige. None of that is required and all requires consent - the cop knows that and knows that few people will stand up for that.
Such fishing expeditions should be illegal and anything found should be considered inadmissible due to unreasonable search. When the professional trained in law knows that they can game the average person it should be unreasonable practice.
That's not really relevant this was about going to jail after police break the constitution. If we're talking about bad things cops do there's civil asset forfeiture.
The minute the entanglement happens the person on the receiving end’s life gets 1000x more complicated. It’s a hollow victory if you have to go to court and spend a year or more defending yourself
Rights needing to occasionally be upheld by the courts wasn't my complaint though. Its cases where rights we're clearly infringed, at least I'd expect most citizens would agree, and courts uphold it because a person didn't say a particular phrase, for example, or because a "reasonable" cop would have seen a cracked door as implied consent.
That's why they said it's in between. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Border control is border control, this is not a stop and frisk scenario.
Yes its border patrol, but its also still specifically for American citizens.
Border patrol doesn't get immunity from the constitution and my need to reenter the country is not probably cause for a Terry stop and search of my phone.
>There are many instances today of cops forcibly entering a home claiming nothing more than a welfare check, or "we received a call."
And there are also many instances of the city being sued, those cops being sued, losing qualified immunity, losing their jobs, etc, because we do still have recourse when cops do the wrong thing.
If your rights were violated, you stand to get a big payout, and get the cops fired that violated your rights. We aren't powerless, yet.
> And there are also many instances of [...] those cops being sued, losing qualified immunity, losing their jobs
Not really, the data points the other way. Cops basically never have to actually pay for their wrongdoings. Over 99.98% of money successfully recovered from cases against police is paid out by the cities, not cops personally [1]. A considerable number of cops that are fired are also eventually rehired by the same department [2] or a different one [3]. So I don't think it's that clear that you "have recourse when cops do the wrong thing".
[1] https://nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/NYULawRe...
[2] https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol74/iss4/4/
[3] https://yalelawjournal.org/pdf/GrunwaldRappaportArticle_s6br...
Can you link to some of these cases of cops losing qualified immunity? It's an area in interested in but I understand that to be a vanishingly rare outcome - like only in very egregious cases, not just for run of the mill rights violations.
In case this isn't a bot and simply someone unfamiliar with the internet search, here is a snippet from the Google AI results when searching for the phrase, "list of US court cases where police lost qualified immunity."
--------
A federal court denies qualified immunity when an officer’s conduct violates a clearly established constitutional right or when material facts remain heavily disputed for a jury. While appellate and district courts routinely evaluate these claims, absolute lists contain thousands of entries because denials typically happen at the lower or circuit court levels rather than as sweeping national precedent.[0]
Notable Federal and Supreme Court Cases Denying Immunity
Taylor v. Riojas (2020): The U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court and denied qualified immunity to correctional officers who housed an inmate in shockingly filthy, human-waste-packed cells for days, ruling that the extreme conditions-violating the Eighth Amendment-needed no prior identical precedent.[1]
King v. Brownback (Sixth Circuit): The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied qualified immunity to members of a joint law enforcement task force after they aggressively tackled and beat an innocent man (James King) outside a convenience store when they mistook him for a suspect.[2]
Schroeder v. City of Des Moines (2022): The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that three police officers were not entitled to qualified immunity after conducting an unlawful, suspicionless car stop and subsequent arrest based on an unverified temporary license plate.[3]
Glover v. City of Jackson (2024): A federal district court famously rejected a detective’s qualified immunity defense in a major civil rights action involving fabricated evidence and malicious prosecution, highlighting systemic flaws in the doctrine itself.[4]
[0] - https://ij.org/press-release/massive-new-study-reveals-that-...
[1] - https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/qualified-imm...
[2] - https://ij.org/case/king-v-brownback/
[3] - https://iowaappeals.com/uncategorized/three-des-moines-polic...
[4] - https://eji.org/news/federal-court-denies-qualified-immunity...
Did you read your [2] citation? While the 6th court denied immunity, they tried to claim a different immunity. Upon appeal to the Supreme Court, the SC said you settle it without immunity first, the 6th court did not take that advice. Sounds like they used a different law.
I am not familiar with the case, but from my reading IJ is still trying to fight the immunity.
> Instead, the high court asked the Sixth Circuit to decide the issue first. Rather than seriously engaging with the issue, as the Supreme Court asked, the Sixth Circuit unthinkingly applied outdated caselaw, becoming the sixth federal appeals court to do so. Now, IJ is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in and deny the government one of its many tools to avoid the Constitution
It isn't foolproof though, and police and DAs have incentive to both work together and to look the other way.
Note I also didn't say the problem is rampant. I take issue that its possible at all, and that it isn't a 100% success rate of holding police to account, especially when most are required to wear body cameras today.
Or your family gets the payout because the cops killed you.
Border search exception lowers the requirements for judicial oversight.
"In United States criminal law, the border search exception is a doctrine that allows searches and seizures at international borders and their functional equivalent without a warrant or probable cause. Generally speaking, searches within 100 miles (160 km) of the border are more permissible without a warrant than those conducted elsewhere in the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
213 milion people live in this zone.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
It's really crazy. If 2/3 of us don't have privacy rights then what are we even doing.
Lying to ourselves that we were ever a free nation.
we're far closer to one side of that spectrum than the other. consider the retroactively legalized mass wiretapping, room 641A, NIST compromises, PRISM, 14 Eyes, the other Snowden revelations, etc
then consider this paired with the implementation of mass data sharing between the alphabet agencies, surveillance data sharing from private companies like Amazon Ring, Flock, Clearview, etc. and NSPM-7 ordering agencies to create JTTFs to target organizations like BLM
then consider the unmitigated use of force by federal law enforcement agencies like ICE
I think if this were 1995 your point might be fair but those days are unfortunately long gone
shudder. but, where else could we go? switzerland? my point being we need to try to get 1995 back. id gladly trade my iphone for a car phone.
Agree with the thrust of your comment, but I had to comment on this:
> In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will.
I think you may be misunderstanding that many laws, even in fair, just societies, are intentionally designed to be flexible. The real world is so variable and messy that in many cases it isn't feasible for a law to be written such it can be unambiguously determined whether or not a specific action violated the law. Laws often rely on humans using context to judge whether something violates the spirit of a law, and in a just society, this is a good thing.
My point is that I don't believe the idea of "perfect rule of law" is sensible. Law is always necessarily a bit fuzzy and nebulous.
Theres a reason why the motto of banana republic leaders is: "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law"
In a non-rule-of-law country though, they don't even try.
I think I mostly disagree with this. "Technical compliance" is not and should not be the thing that a legal system is designed to incentivize, and should not be the criterion for "perfect rule of law."
I would disagree with you, because "technical compliance" is compliance with the letter of the law. You have complied with every explicit requirement of the law. If the law is insufficient then legislature is free to add a clause that bans whatever aspect you technically comply with that they don't like.
The alternative is complying with the spirit of the law, which is an eternal guessing game. Who knows whether it's legal or not, we have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide what Congress _actually_ meant. It implies that the law means something beyond what anybody bothered to actually write down, and nobody has any idea what that is until the Judiciary interprets it into "actual law".
Law isn’t code. There’s no mechanical decision procedure. That’s both impossible and undesirable.
What should be the thing that it is designed to incentivize, then? Compliance with the spirit of the law?
Acting morally should obviously be the thing that law is designed to incentivize.
Having good technical tools won't fix a failing society, but they're still nice to have and they make state surveillance of its citizens just a little bit harder. I mean, where would we be without strong cryptography?
these are abuses of existing powers, rather than acting with reckless abandon
the government would have no ability to access the data if he didnt bring it on his person here.
hell, he could have just continued to not given his password and left his phone with them, too.
The only practical measure you can take is to wipe your devices before travel.
Definitely sounds like the crime of hiding data.
Yes, trying to solve a regulation or legal issue by some technical workaround will never work, you have to fight it at the same level, legally, or system-wise, otherwise, you will be like the person who tries to wash the stairs from the bottom all the way up, it rarely works, you gotta go up to down, collectively go against the matter rather than individually duct taping it for your own specific needs. In that example, it won’t be far fetched the same ones who made it illegal to wipe your phone to make illegal to install xyz OS or using abc protocol, in fact, that’s exactly what they are trying to do under the disguise of “protect the kids” and going after encryption or similar privacy related issues.
They would not be so vehemently against it if it did not work. There is a reason E2EE, duress passwords and similar technologies are under such intense assault these days.
one part of resisting is installing GrapheneOS.
Destruction of evidence as a crime goes back a long, long way. There's no precedent for making it illegal to install some OS or protocol the feds don't like. I don't particularly like what's being done to this guy, but what he did was pretty stupid. You can't be obligated to incriminate yourself but you aren't allowed to destroy evidence.
> Ultimately if the intent is that the government wants to see your private data, hiding it in any way will be charged
Inc. hiding by leaving it your home country?
Normally I agree, but making the implementation initially ineffective is a good way to complicate more far reaching measures.
Americans aren't standing up against this, but they might have considerably more interest if the government was instead trying to ban encrypting data in cloud storage for everyone.
There's also just the fact it's ridiculous I can't have a spare phone ready to go in a few minutes and get it back exactly as I left it.
This is false. If you can image and wipe your phone on the plane before landing, and write those random bytes to a usb stick, the usb stick will appear blank, because encrypted data is noise. You land with a factory blank phone. You clear customs and get where you are going and restore your phone.
Substitute cloud storage for a USB stick if you do it at your departure hotel.
There are absolutely technical solutions to the implementations of tyranny. Otherwise we wouldn’t bother with encryption. Violence can’t solve math problems.
All of your websites are missing the legally required Impressum, comrade. It must contain your full legal name and address.
I'm serious, this is the law in Germany. It's also a great demonstration of a shitty law that people prefer to avoid complying with, which surely has something to do with the topic.
How do you solve it when they beat you for having a phone that doesn't look like they want?
Like whatever arbitrary thing they decide it should look like that day.
You can’t solve that in any case, but that has nothing to do with tech.
So you agree with my original comment, then.
Corollary: this story has nothing to do with tech.
GrapheneOS has built-in encrypted backup and restore. It backs up the same data transferred by Google's device transfer feature for moving to a new phone which is nearly all app data, the data in the home directory, contacts and a bit more. Certain apps such as Signal encrypt their own data with another layer of encryption using a hardware keystore key. Signal's own backup system needs to be used for that, although it can just be used as a way to get data into the system backup.
It's worth noting wiping a device shortly before an anticipated search could also be considered destruction of evidence in the same way. It doesn't have to be done after a request for the data to be considered that.
> There's no deception required to protect sensitive data or avoid the seizure of an expensive phone. Consent to unlocking the phone, refuse to unlock the drive. The drive gets seized and you go on your way (if you're a US citizen entering the USA).
This was likely the best move for him to take. They could have held him for a while and wasted his time but eventually would have had to give him access to a lawyer and let him go. Unless they had a recording of him entering a PIN/password, they were nearly certainly not going to get his data from it. He very likely didn't gain anything from wiping it.
He did help every GrapheneOS user by spreading awareness of the duress PIN/password. It was designed around an adversary aware of it and therefore not wanting to attempt using a PIN/password obtained via coercion. In the future, we want to integrate the feature into the secure element rate limiting for key derivation so it can't be avoided by exploiting the OS.
> GrapheneOS has built-in encrypted backup and restore.
The backup tool on GrapheneOS doesn't work for a large percentage of app data. And it often silently fails to backup some data, so you don't even know where the gaps are.
There have been promises of a better solution for years, but I haven't seen any movement yet.
This has gotten much better fairly recently ime. My backups to WebDAV work most of the time and when it fails I get notifications. But it was quite bad for a long time so I sympathize with your point
> My backups to WebDAV work most of the time
"My patients survive most of the time and when they don't I get notifications"
> It's worth noting wiping a device shortly before an anticipated search could also be considered destruction of evidence in the same way.
Look, if we are talking about a warranted search in the US then I'd agree with you. However, the entire point of CPB's unwarranted search authority is to stop contraband from coming in.
This would be like arguing that throwing away materials illegal in the US before boarding a plane is destruction of evidence.
Like, even if we assume exactly what CBP's claim is true, it was to stop CSAM. And the person had in fact had CSAM. Destroying the CSAM before getting to the US would be legal even though the US doesn't like it.
Further, if the data is actually backed up, then you haven't actually destroyed it and CBP or another agency can provide you with a search warrant for what they are looking for. But I'd note that this is far outside of CBP's authority. They are for stopping contraband, not FBI work.
And this is why he isn't being charged with destruction of evidence. He is being charged with destruction of property subject to a civil seizure.
The only reason they can charge him with this is that he destroyed it after being notified that it was being seized. If he has deleted it before then there would be nothing they could charge him with.
Right, but I think what makes this interesting is the destruction happened only after violating his civil rights. Had they simply seized the device the data wouldn't have been destroyed. He refused to give them the pass code several times before giving them the wiping code. He asked to leave and see a lawyer multiple times, which they refused to provide him with one. They held him, illegally, until he gave them his phone pass code.
And the whole reason they wanted in his phone (the real reason) was to figure out who he worked with in the stop cop city protest. That's why he was really targeted in the first place.
> He did help every GrapheneOS user by spreading awareness of the duress PIN/password. It was designed around an adversary aware of it and therefore not wanting to attempt using a PIN/password obtained via coercion.
You added it by copying Blackberry[1]? But seriously how did you think of that feature?
Genius feature when you put it like that.
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/40700-grapheneos-protection...
Those "nandroid" backups weren't "close" to that, they were literally that initially. Then, when Android phones started coming with the /sdcard partition mapped to the internal flash memory (a subdirectory of /data) instead of an actual SD card, the /data partition backup mechanism was changed to copy individual files into some sort of archive, but the end result remained the same.
You can still do it on modern Android devices, as long as the bootloader is unlocked. Yes, the file system is encrypted, but a modern custom recovery is able decrypt and mount it.
How many mainstream phones come with unlocked bootloaders? Just pixel right?
Most do, at least in most countries.
Not by default, but you have to enable it in developer settings, and then it does a full wipe, so if you plan to root your phone anyway, you do that when you buy it (buy, test hardware, oem unlock + factory reset, root, actually start using).
Fairphone
From memory:
- non-US Samsung phones
- Most Sony, HTC, Motorola are unlocked
- Chinese brands like Xiaomi
Not all Pixels are unlocked; carrier-bought US phones are usually OEM locked.
Xiaomi has fake unlock. It has an unlock button that never works and never has worked. Instead you have to write a letter to get their approval code or some complete bullshit like that. Of course this is because unlocking is illegal in China and they sell a lot of phones in China.
You have to ask yourself why this isn't possible anymore. Similar to how recording calls used to be possible but no longer. I don't know why it is but it is awfully strange that they keep tightening the belt on what we can do with our own devices.
You can do it on iOS officially. Android never had an official backup process, it was always through root apps. Backups could just be a casualty of killing rooted Android.
Why would recording calls not be possible anymore? On a rooted phone you can do it, some amixer and arecords might be needed, but it stores the audio of both sides.
Sadly both Google and Apple allow this only when using the cloud... You even can't configure your own cloud provider for the backup
So, how easy is this today on computers? If I have an Ubuntu 26.04 machine running, I can easily image the entire thing, completely wipe the machine, then reinstall from a flash drive and it behaves as if nothing happened?
This isn’t my territory, so excuse my ignorance, but I’d love to know how
easy! google "archwiki dd" scroll to 2.2
Just get a larger drive than the internal one, and "dd" (copy byte by byte) the whole internal drive into a file on that external drive.
There could be issues with the TPM chips, having to re-enroll fingerprints or something, but not a problem in the case of a border search, since they can't pull out anything. So you could backup your whole system, install a clean ubuntu without anything special on the system (just if they check), and then download the image wherever you are and do whatever you want.
Why bother with the drive at all? Just store your image in the cloud, and once you're past the border, download and re-image.
There's a way simpler solution and it's just to leave your phone at home and put your SIM in a different handset without all your data on it
An increasing portion of phones are eSIM [0] only these days, and the difficulty of swapping can be weirdly-bad depending on provider.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM
But non esims exist still, and if you're that worried about security, you can get one.
Not forever though, and if you're an iPhone user, already current iPhones sold in the US are eSIM only. So in some number of years (depenfing on your device oldness tolerance), they will become obsolete eventually.
Why would you use an iPhone?
US iPhones don’t have sim slots at all anymore.
Can't one just buy some craphone for like $50? with whatever sim.
The whole problem as I see it is that people for some reason submit all their life to a device they can not control. And when it bites them they go all suprised.
PinePhone will boot off a microSD before the internal flash, so you could have a clean OS on the card and your real one on the flash. The SD card is under the back cover with the battery and SIM, so chances are they won't think to try to remove it.
Somebody who doesn't know what they are doing, sure. Somebody who does, and maybe even enjoy doing it, and the challenge of it, will surely know about it simply because they are maybe two dozens of types of smartphones out there. Android (including of course GrapheneOS) based ones, iOS ... then PinePhones, Volla, Purism and few others. So having a guide on how each one can have hidden partitions or booting mechanisms is tractable.
Point being that relying on a hidden trick (rather than encryption) is a very risky bet.
Coincidence but I just started to listen to 404 media podcast on tracking rare books being scanned in AI facilities thanks to just a cheap AirTag. I find this a good illustration of how easy it is to find something if you know how to look for it, and thus again why encryption is the only safe way.
Also, it is just a nice idea if you are prone to losing phones. Backups are good for all kinds of reasons.
I really really want this for GrapheneOS. The current backup situation is terrible and nowhere near being able to easily image and restore the entire phone (or at least user data).
Well it’s really easy to do that with an iPhone. Just with the inconvenience of needing to use a computer for that. You can just create an encrypted backup of an iPhone and store that anywhere.
This method is missing the details of the restore process. Which would require a Mac you trust. Or trusting your backup to iCloud.
Your setup doesn't really work.
At the border you have the same right to refuse to provide the pin/password on boot of your otherwise encrypted phone as you do to refuse to provide the key for an encrypted USB. (That right differs slightly depending on whether you are a US citizen or not).
What the subject in question of this new story did was cause the border official to inadvertently destroy the evidence on the phone and therefore indirectly destroyed the evidence himself.
(I'm not making a commentary as to whether or not it's a valid charge and criticism, or not. I'm just saying that's the material difference between your scenario and the original scenario)
I agree. Here's my method.
I have my passwords on proton pass with 2fa. I back my pics to private cloud storage. I keep 2fa backup codes in my wallet.
Wiping the phone on a whim is a minor inconvenience. Full image restoration would be neat.
edit to say: Apparently GrapheneOS has an image backup feature, which I will investigate shortly. So perhaps what you're asking for exists!
I've restored iPhones before, and it does seem pretty simple. Easier than PCs for sure. It's not instant, but the basic configuration is restored pretty quickly while the bulk data restoration happens in the background while you're able to use the phone.
What about banking apps and stuff? Does the device binding still work or do you need to set it up again?
Depends on the app and security setup. If it's using old school Symantec VIP Access, it will not survive a restore. If it is using TOTP from 1Password, it will. Not sure about other options, those are the two I am most familiar with. Thankfully I only have a single app these days relying on VIP Access.
My banking app required to log again to the bank account to bind new device and that's it. iOS is way better in this regard than stock Android. You pretty much get 1:1 copy on new device in an instant with the exceptions such as banking apps but that's kinda understandable.
It is not remotely simple. So much is lost on device change.
It is that simple for most people. Millions of people do this every time they buy a new iPhone and in practice it means waiting a bit while things download and logging into their banking app.
It’s harder for people who don’t use cloud services and have to do things like copy TOTP seeds, but in this scenario you want those to live on a Yubikey with a PIN anyway.
They could be, easily so, twrp backup (and clockworkmod recovery before that), you'd just create the image of the phone (all partitions, everything), dump it to wherever, and then restore it, it was a standard system for testing new android versions on the phone.
The "secure enclaves" and other related stuff have made this harder in the recent years.
It'd be less of a hassle to buy a burner phone to travel with. It's not a felony to not bring your main phone when leaving the country.
Until they decide it’s a felony
Actually they have almost done that. People have been harassed, detained or denied entry for coming with no phone or only a blank phone.
Can you provide some examples?
> ...making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive... refuse to unlock the drive
How is this any different than refusing to unlock the phone? It just seems you've added unnecessary extra steps.
As I understand it, the drive can thus be seized, and a potential loss of a cheap flash drive is a lower inconvenience than loss of the phone.
Isn’t this basically what you do with an iPhone. You reset/format it then it gets back to its original state with iCloud?
some of the banking apps, UBS banking require reactivation. So most of the apps yes with exceptions.
How about every civilian banding together and refusing to comply?
in before those fucking "I hAvE nOtHiNg tO hIdE" twats
I already refuse to comply with questioning at the border. Been being harassed and my non-citizen travel companions being SA’d by CBP for decades. Get with the program.
Really? Does it take a long time to recover the phone? Haven’t really ever needed to recover a backup
Apple makes this very easy. I broke an iPhone and bought a replacement. If you have iCloud, you login to the new phone and you can see which backups you can recover from. If you are transferring a phone, say you upgraded, it’s even easier. You can also image the phone with a connected laptop and store it on a backup drive, which is nice to not use up iCloud limits.
The transfer and backup system are pretty much the same mechanisms.
Restoring is probably order of ~1 hour to go through all the setup. Then some hours to sync any data and updates that need to be redownloaded, apps reinstalled, etc.
Aha that is actually pretty long
That's mostly time for data sync in the background. It takes 5-10 minutes tops to have the phone working again, but longer to get all of the media and other data restored. Depends on how good your connection is.
Last time it took me maybe 15 minutes on 600Mbps 5G to restore everything fully.
Think for a moment. What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?
It's the same thing. They punched in a code, they are presented with a wiped phone. Can they prove the guy gave them a distress password and wasn't simply carrying a wiped phone to begin with? No, but they just need to imply that is the reason to charge him with the felony.
> What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?
> It's the same thing. They punched in a code, they are presented with a wiped phone.
No, the behavior between the two is in fact visibly and obviously different.
The regular passcode unlocks the phone. The duress passcode reboots the phone and resets it. I know this because this is literally what previous articles said happened when they entered the passcode in regards to this case.
See for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcgnBjHOK2g
You can say it was a wiped phone to begin with, and that may work in court. They're welcome to have evidence it wasn't true, but whether they actually have that evidence is up in question.
But it's irrelevant in this case because the guy confessed.
When you enter the unlock code to a phone that was already reset, it immediately unlocks.
When you enter the duress code, you get an animation while it resets, and then it reboots to a factory reset state.
It is directly observable which code was entered. You can claim that it was something else, but your claim is easily dismissed as bullshit.
This was exactly what was observed and recorded by the officials in this case.
Tyranny does not care about "proof".
It doesn't even care about plausible deniability.
Best you can get away with is lack of suspicion. Have a secondary phone with some standard apps on that you use now and then so theyhave a history and just look like you are just not a technical person and read novels on dead trees instead. A lot of work but likely works.
are we seriously approaching a point where its quasi-illegal to not participate in the socials?
More like they've looked you up and the apps being missing would be a giveaway about the dummy phone
So it’s becoming illegal to not have the Facebook app installed on your phone if you have a Facebook account?
The fake SINs from Shadowrun come to mind: https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/System_Identification_Numb...
Only at the border but yes, effectively.
We are already there. Border cops have been searching people's socials to see what you think of Trump and denying entry if you don't like him or if you don't have enough socials or don't let the cops search them. This was a year ago.
and stupid me here thinking compelled speech was a clear line in the sand
We will never cross the line. The line will always be in front of us until it's suddenly miles behind us.
The best technical solution is one code opens to a phone that has things but isn't your actual phone, and then another code that opens to your real phone.
One is destroying evidence and the other is not.
The actual difference in this case is that the victim told the cops that the code had wiped the phone. That's a confession. Visible differences aren't relevant.
Have you considered "no password set"?
They could be indistinguishable in theory, but looking up some videos of the process, it appears that GrapheneOS doesn't try to make the duress pin process look like your phone was just blank the whole time. It says "wrong pin" and then the whole thing resets.
That still seems plausibly deniable enough if the cops aren't taking careful notes. Which is a gamble,but you still shouldn't confess.
>What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?
They don't get any indication that there was data there to be deleted, and you don't just factory reset but flash w an image of a clean phone that's been used. It has apps, it has accounts, it looks to the untrained eye (because that's who's looking at it) like a phone that was used normally by someone who has done nothing wrong.
> refuse to unlock the drive. The drive gets seized and you go on your way (if you're a US citizen entering the USA)
… yeah I doubt that nowadays honestly
I mean, you could ship your real phone to w/e destination ahead of you and bring a $50 burner to the border. If you're a person of interest this won't work because they can monitor you and the destination but if you're a regular schmuck then a burner that never touches your private data or accounts and has a bunch of dummy stuff on it will get you past the border goons.
> For exactly the border search scenario, I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs.
You're always been able to backup and restore your iPhone to your local Windows PC or a Mac using free first party software from Apple.
Only app data, not the apps themselves. On restore you need an internet connection to redownload the applications.
> I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs. Imagine booting the phone from a flash drive, making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive, and writing a fresh OS before reaching the border.
Backing up and restoring an iPhone is extremely easy. You don't need to imagine all of this flash drive or encrypted imaging stuff. You plug it into your computer and do a backup. You can then wipe the phone through the menus. Restoring from the same computer is easy.
Except apps themselves don't get backed up, only their data. So if you had any apps that are no longer in the app store or that came from outside of it (e.g. TestFlight or development builds), those won't be restored.
The decoy passcode feature should boot into a separate partition that looks like a normal phone setup, and during that time quietly erase the user's actual data. They would never have known if it worked like this.
Probably, but it will be more valuable for society for him to be tried and found not guilty, setting a legal precedent.
It turns out there already is a legal precedent for this. It's called the 4th Amendment:
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It seems cute_boi has it right: the 4th doesn’t apply to border crossings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Arnold
US v. Arnold was a Ninth Circuit ruling, and was later superseded in its own circuit by US. v Cotterman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Cotterman), which ruled that a "forensic" search does not fall within the scope of routine border inspection, and does require individual suspicion.
This was backed up with even more rulings like US v. Kolusz in the Fourth Circuit. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on this specific question, but has issued other general rulings about cell phone data, like Riley v. California, which determined that data on a cell phone is protected by the Fourth Amendment against warrantless search and seizure.
If the case in the article makes its way up to SCOTUS, it's not unreasonable to expect that the court will combine multiple districts' established precedent that "forensic searches" are not covered by any border exception with its own recent precedent protecting cell phone data, and rule that demanding unrestricted access to phone data without reasonable suspicion is unconstitutional.
Precedent is no longer a reliable indicator of future rulings.
Maybe that's why they are doing it on the airport which is extraterritorial
I assumed all these amendment don't apply at border.
There’s nothing in the constitution that makes that separation, only people deciding the constitution isn’t actually important
“The border” has similarly been extended to cover the majority of the US population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception#/map/0 Yes, according the the US government warrantless border searches apply in West Virginia. (Map from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception)
It's based on the interpretation of "unreasonable" and while the current rules may be far from perfect I don't think interpreting routine border searches as categorically "unreasonable" is better.
“Reasonable” and the current definition of what the government considers reasonable are entirely separate things. The entire state of Florida is currently defined as on the US border, that’s effectively a meaningless definition.
Further, in what way is the content of someone’s cellphone relevant at a border specifically? Inspecting luggage for cocaine at an entry point makes sense, but physical borders mean little in the face of the internet. You might as well just erase the phone before crossing the border.
Who is proposing interpreting routine border searches as categorically "unreasonable"?
The amendment applies at the border. The agents are acting unlawfully.
IAAL, this is not legal advice though.
Routine border searches are largely permitted under the 4th Amendment. This is settled law.
What constitutes a "routine border search" that would be permitted for the purposes of customs enforcement, however, is something that is hotly debated, and that the courts have clarified in recent decisions such as US v. Cotterman and US v. Koluz does not include "forensic searches" without the standard Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion criterion being met.
Well, of late, what was considered settled law is being reinterpreted at a remarkable rate, so maybe there is hope for this 'settled' law to be overturned....
Like what? The big one people always try to bring up when they make coy statements like this is Roe v. Wade but no one thought that was a strong ruling. Even later justices who were strong proponents of women's right to chose like Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought it was a shit ruling.
I was actually thinking of them overturning Humphrey's executor vs United States....
Roe v Wade and the resulting multi-decade clusterfuck is because your Congress are weak-willed pussies who are unable to actually work through a legislative process to find a consensus.
Yes, it took decades, but in Australia our various states have worked through the "it's criminal" -> "It's criminal but not enforced" -> "we're deliberately vague and won't prosecute doctors" -> "we have a legal framework that makes abortion legal up to {20,22,24} weeks on demand, after which it requires the consensus of two independent medical opinions".
The US needs to do the same. Yes, it will take decades. No, it shouldn't because abortion is a medical procedure, but religion is a scourge.
The Roberts court is nakedly partisan and makes rulings as necessary to expand and protect Republican power (e.g. they protected Trump’s reelection with rulings with carveouts allowing them to decide the other way if a Democratic president tried a similar argument in the future). You should not bet on a reinterpretation of existing law here moving in a direction you’d like.
Interesting. What, then, do you make of the extensive rulings that the current court has issued to block or overturn Trump's actions?
How do you reconcile your 'nakedly partisan' theory with the court rulings that, for example, overruled Trumps attempt to use the AEA for immigration enforcement, overruled his attempt to deploy the National Guard without the consent of state governments, overruled his attempts to unilaterally impose tariffs, overruled his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, and so on?
And if at the border they found keys to your house so they went there and did a search too? Thanks what a phone is. Not even mentioning Tailscale. ;p
I mean if it were me? Yep. I'm in a city that borders Canada, and pretty much anywhere i go is "the border" despite my current route to the nearest bridge being about 45 minutes. I personally feel it's a little ridiculous that CBP has jurisdiction in my neighborhood.
"settled law" is no longer a reliable indicator in the US.
This one wasn't routine
How so?
Well they got a tip 4 hours before the guy got on the flight, that he was on the flight and they should search him
That sounds like reasonable suspicion then, which is a lawful predicate for a border search.
Even random border searches are permitted according to our jurisprudence.
"unreasonable" does a lot of heavy lifting here.
And unreasonable is open to interpretation.
I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence.
He could have refused search without a warrant, intentionally destroying evidence is a different legal matter.
So if you really want to nab someone but you don't care what the charge is, you can threaten them with a 4th Amendment-violating search, which induces them to destroy evidence. Pretty neat trick. IANAL, but I don't think it's controversial to say that people who treat the Bill of Rights like an obstacle to be hacked around probably shouldn't be in positions of power.
(IAAL, this is not legal advice, consult your own attorney)
If you destroy evidence, that’s your own fault. You can’t blame law enforcement for inducing you to commit crimes they didn’t ask you to commit. That’s just silly and no court will entertain that theory.
To protect your rights under the 4th Amendment, you refuse the search. If law enforcement conducts the search anyway and a court finds the search was unlawful, the court will exclude the evidence found in the search from consideration in the trial along with any evidence that flows from that. Neither the jury nor the court will be able to use it.
Have you heard of entrapment?
Yes. That’s why I added the predicate “crimes they didn’t ask you to commit.”
IANAL, but I've heard that entrapment defenses are way harder to use, and much rarer, in reality than on TV.
First, you frequently require a judge's permission to even argue it.
But the real burden is showing that your client would not have committed the crime without the effect of the police. A cop posing as a drug dealer and offering you drugs as you pass them in the park every day doesn't count; a cop hounding you for months to commit wire fraud because they mistakenly believe you're in a criminal org might, though.
You are describing the world as it exists, while I'm saying that we should have a better one.
There is no right to refusal at border control. It's outside the 4th amendment so it's not even relevant.
That’s not true. US citizens maintain their constitutional rights at the border. That has been tested in court. This is not the case for non-US person.
Unfortunately, this seems to be less true now, depending on which circuit your case is tried in.
Also note that Miranda rights are not constitutional rights.
This guy requested not to proceed without his lawyer present several times, with no result.
> I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence.
It seems to be more true than it did a couple of decades ago, what with more recent rulings like US v. Cotterman and US. v. Koluz better clarifying what counts as a routine border searches vs. more in-depth "forensic" searches that require individual suspicion.
who investigates and prosecutes SS agents who violate constitutional rights?
you'll find it's the same people
It can’t be destroying evidence if there’s no case or charge being pressed for which that material would be evidence.
“Entering the country while in possession of a device storing binary data” isn’t a crime.
> It can’t be destroying evidence if there’s no case or charge being pressed for which that material would be evidence.
(IAAL, not legal advice, consult your own lawyer)
Where’d you get that idea? That’s not the law. As soon as there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and the law enforcement encounter occurs, that’s the threshold for when preservation of evidence begins. It doesn’t matter whether it might not have ultimately resulted in a criminal charge. You cannot intentionally interfere with a lawful investigation, in any way, full stop.
Reasonable suspicion of what though? Is them just being suspicious by default "reasonable"?
Reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. Though at the border, not even that is required.
There was no reasonable suspicion in this case and definitely not of the pretext they used (child porn).
In the case of a border search it’s when the encounter begins; no reasonable suspicion is needed.
Evidence of what?
> I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence.
Certainly not. But, of course, something can only be evidence in relation to a specific crime that is being investigated. If you aren't already a suspect in a crime, then the data on your phone wasn't evidence in the first place.
Allowed to refuse search? What are you smoking?
Look at the username. You're talking to gpt5 smoking tokens. It's hallucinating "evidence," whatever that's supposed to mean. It doesn't recognize that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect against law enforcement fishing expeditions that lets the government intimidate people for having the "wrong" political views and invent pretexts for further harassment.
Whatever you think the fourth amendment is supposed to do, doesn’t match reality. Despite your ad-hominem attack.
… that dude probably would have preferred not having that in their life
Not necessarily? He’s an activist. Getting arrested on purpose to prove a point is a classical activism move
perhaps, but what public activity isn't activism?
eg,
i have very interesting empirical evidence that recent Anthropic models are specifically trained to refuse to critique the whitehouse cabinet and elected officials, and that this is in fact an artifact of post training rather than prompts. (its very interesting when you get opus 5 to do the correct ethical evaluation and then its like "i'm slipping back to false balance.... its in my weights....." metaphorically speaking)
likewise, i think the current white house should go die in a fire.
is that activism? someone can be an activist and not be equipped for unplanned legal escalations.
also waiting for the courts to fix things isnt activism if you want to protect people at all the next 2 years at current trajectories :( fixing shit is activism, letting others take the flack, not activism.
> perhaps, but what public activity isn't activism?
Buying eggs at the grocery store.
You might be too familiar with "activism" as a perjurative but it needn't be one. Gaining visibility to your case by the media reporting on an arrest is sometimes seen as a plus (ex. Rosa Parks).
I'm not personally much of that mindset because the media didn't de-segregate the buses. It was black people literally just never taking them until it de-segregated that did.
People pay extra for free range eggs to discourage battery farming, I’d say that counts?
it's only activism when it comes from the woke region of cascadia, otherwise it's just sparkling disgruntlement
>> woke region of cascadia
i lol'd, but is there an unwoke region of cascadia?
Oh there are many, many parts. By land area, probably most. But not by population.
> You might be too familiar with "activism" as a perjurative
Do people generally regard it as a perjurative? I always assumed it ranged from neutral to positive. I do wonder how off my calibration is sometimes.
Yes they do now. It's like "troublemaker". You're not supposed to activise or make trouble, you're supposed to be a quiet little obedient dog to the system.
> perjurative
Just nitpicking, the word is "pejorative". Kind of a funny mix-up in context, though. (Perjurative would be related to lying under oath.)
You don't think product selection is a form of activism?
It's not really comparable. When activists voluntarily face, and especially when they are in fact, subject to substantial hardship and punishment is when you start changing hearts and minds. Otherwise it's either ignored or generates contempt.
Does it suck that that's what it takes to get people to seriously engage with an issue? Sure. But if that weren't the case the issues that need addressing probably wouldn't arise in the first place. People need the consequences to be presented in clear, stark, human terms, to cut through the caucauphony of rhetoric.
Ok, so there are forms of activism that are more effective or involve more personal risk. That doesn't answer the question.
It can be, but not by default.
No, not in the least.
Abbie Hoffman has entered the chat
Rosa Parks has entered the bus
Alex Jones entered your living room
Jeffrey Epstein entered your daughter's bedroom.
One of them has rustled your tadpoles.
Steal this comment.
That's not going to stop authoritarians from harassing. Want an example of how this played out?
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) was the SCOTUS case that declared if you were born in the US you were a citizen. You think Mr. Ark was okay from harassment after this case was ruled in his favor? Less than 3 years later he would be held in Texas while local authorities tried to deport him under the Chinese Exclusion Act ignoring his previous ruling (that was national news, and they'd be fully aware of).
Then after winning his freedom, that he was already granted, he was arrested again in SF where they tried to deport him as well. Then after getting released, for something that he has already proven twice now, he went back to China and never returned to the US.
Institutions do not stop authoritarians.
They do slow them down a bit
Yes I totally agree with all this. The government can and will harass whomever they want.
For a hundred years whenever an uppity black man or Northern activist crossed the Mason-Dixie line a KKK sherrif was waiting for them.
You don't actually have to jail people- you just have to make their life miserable. At that point your adversary will either shut up or emigrate. Anyone who speaks out against Trump or the GOP is going to be targeted.
Assuming he is found (edit: not) guilty, which is not guaranteed at all
Trumps DOJ has destroyed credibility with federal judges all ove the country. They’ve had more than one case come back not guilty so far (subway sandwich guy). I’m optimistic they fail to get a guilty verdict here too.
Sandwich guy was acquitted by a jury, not a judge.
Isn't a jury a check against the power of the court? (preventing those expedient "hanging judges")
I suppose you could word it that way but the statement given, that Trump's influence is failing with federal judges, isn't demonstrated by a jury refusing to convict someone. That is shown by judges throwing out cases; which has been happening.
That's positive. I don't live in the USA and I sort of actively avoid news from there. It's good to hear that the federal courts aren't necessarily on Trump's side
Like most things in the States, it depends VERY heavily on location.
Some judges have plainly bent the knee. Some have gone the opposite. Some actually follow the intent of the law. Some follow it to the letter.
Like everywhere else.
Dollars to donuts the guys walks, as he should
Not guilty sets no legal precedent. For that, he needs to be found giulty at trial (no plea bargains) appeal that conviction, and then have an appelate court declare that a mistake was made. I would not wish such a process on anyone.
A precedent is set every time an issue is judged for the first time. If you have any prior case of someone being found guilty or not for this exact case, that would be the precedent. If there is none, then this will set it, including appeal results.
Those are interesting precedents, not the binding ones that count and other courts must follow.
Except that's not going to happen because evidence spoliation (legal term) is a crime. And that's what he did. You can say it shouldn't be but it is. This is slam dunk and it happens all the time. It's the same crime as destroying evidence that's been subpoenaed or that it has a preservation hold on it.
And the court gets to assume that whatever was on that phone hurts your case, regardless of whether or not it did.
It would've been better if he'd crossed the border with a phone already factory reset and just restore it after entry.
What case law allows for the establishment of “evidence” before a crime was alleged? Is it not a catch-22?
First, the law applicable here is 18 USC § 2232 [1]:
> (a)Destruction or Removal of Property To Prevent Seizure.—
> Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
Now what I think you're asking about is "adverse inference". In civil cases, the courts get to assume the evidence lost hurt you. In criminal trials it's a little more complicated but can show up as, for example, jury instructions. The court is allowed to instruct the jury that they can presume that the destroyed evidence was harmful to the defendant.
[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2232
I think the legal question is whether the officers were authorized to make this particular search+seizure without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.
Independent of the merits of this case, is there legally a distinction between deleting a secret key that decrypts an encrypted blob (maybe not spoilage?) vs writing over the blob itself (spoilage?).
I could see arguments for both, either, or neither but I imagine both are considered spoilage.
This is the problem I run into with technical people discussing the law all the time and I mean this constructively: stop trying to figure out technical workarounds or look for technical compliance. So much of the law comes down to subjective and/or holistic tests of the facts.
As soon as a lawful search is requested, situation has changed. The only question then is if you comply or not. If you remove the ability for that search to take place then how that happened is irrelevant. Destroying a secret key is no different to zeroing a blob of data. Actually the first might be worse. If the key is somehow recoverable (eg you have a copy on a cloud drive) then you can have ongoing penalties by refusing to comply.kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
The only thing that matters is the lawful request. Whatever you do up to that point is treated differently compared to what you do after.
You might say: what if I add a deadman's switch where I have to type in a code every 72 hours to stop it wiping itself? Your thought process might be that this is passive. It doesn't matter. As soon as the request is made and you refuse to hit that switch knowing the phone will wipe, legally it's no different. You have destroyed potential evidence when faced with a lawful search.
This is what I mean when I say stop looking for loopholes or technical compliance. It does not matter.
The other question is whether you can prove what you did. If the guy hadn't bragged that his phone was now wiped, the government would have a much harder time proving he did anything wrong, but his secrets would still be safe from the government.
Not physically possible[1] to be deniable and a bad[2] idea.
[1] https://veracrypt.io/en/Wear-Leveling.html
https://veracrypt.io/en/Trim%20Operation.html
[2] https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
I don't understand how wear leveling makes deniability impossible. You just have to overwrite sectors in the false partition at the same rate as ones in the true partition. Since both the true and false partitions are encrypted, their contents are mathematically indistinguishable from randomness when viewed without the decryption key.
I also wish that GrapheneOS link didn't say a duress PIN forces the attacker to think twice about entering a PIN, knowing it could wipe the device. It doesn't do that for anyone aware of its existence, since of course the attacker can prevent the secure element from sending a delete command to the flash chip. Obviously if you know the device could attempt to delete itself you would break that feature before sending the code to the secure element...
Question on a detail: It's not necessary to have deniability on the fact that you did wipe your device, just on the fact that you did it after you entered the border? Or said differently, if he'd wiped the device before entering the border, it'd be all fine?
(That of course only takes down the "physically impossible" part.)
Hence why travelers should simply not cross the border carrying sensitive data, ever. The Internet can take that data across the border for you.
I do believe that yes, if it was wiped before entering, there would be no charges (unless there was a shadow docket open... that gets murky)
I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of analysis that border guards are capable of.
Once it's a known feature, analysis finding out about it would be added to commercial forensic tools. Given the first two links, simply hooking up a computer to the unlocked phone would allow Cellebrite to give border guards the information that you are using a hidden partition in a user friendly UI.
For example, documents like this[1] document any features that law enforcement should be aware of.
[1] https://www.swgde.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2025-08-21-...
You don’t need it to delete anything, anyway. The encrypted second partition is indistinguishable from random data, so you don’t need to delete it.
100% I have built similar behavior in my [0] encrypted storage app for iOS. User creates a "duress vault" which is an ordinary vault that user can store any data they want (usually something very inconspicuous). If this vault is opened, it will wipe out all the other vaults silently without actually showing any sign of doing so and still preserving the duress vault's data. Even if snapshot of files is made, the index and keys are gone and can't be recovered.
[0] https://vaultaire.app/features/duress-mode/
Why does Apple allow this app to exist, when it banned Iceblock?
I am no Apple, but this is not a vigilante app. All it does is to encrypt user’s own files on their own devices. There are no servers, no backend, no snooping. It uses apple’s services (icloud) for backup and user allows it, error tracking to hosted posthog.
What do you do that you need something like that?
Me personally? Nothing.
I added it after users asked me to solve their problem of being strip searched like this.
I know some people keep crypto wallet keys in the vaults. Someone else wrote me that they carry sensitive documents they don’t want to be exposed.
No recent messages and no recent email would be a pretty big giveaway. It’s a lot of work to make the decoy part of the phone look genuine.
Does the GPS trail of your running app show you were at a protest site? Better remember to remove that as well. What about all the photos you took on your trip - there’s location metadata in there. Maybe the messenger app stripped that out, but what about the one picture you sent by email - is that still in your offline Sent folder?
Messages and email they could have gotten with a warrant. Everything on this phone was obtainable with a warrant.
That seems overcomplicated and opening yourself up to risk
IMO the correct solution is to erase your phone before crossing the border, and then restore it after you’ve crossed
The correct solution is to not accept living under tyranny. I’d invite you to our WhatsApp group chat but well, y’know.
What’s to stop them from seeing an empty phone, and then accuse you of deleting it when they asked to see it?
That isn't a crime. It's not a crime to travel across the border with a factory reset phone. That is a fine thing to do and a regular practice for people working in some sensitive areas.
The issue here is only that he deleted it after they started an investigation.
The legal eagle video in the post says this explicitly that he would've been fine if he had wiped his phone prior to the flight.
> he would've been fine if he had wiped his phone prior to the flight.
This comment assumes rule of law (a.k.a. a government constrained by laws).
What if what we instead had was a government secretly tracking a dissident they didn't like, then searching them with a pretext and no legal justification.
What would have likely happened in that case, is that the government accuses him of destroying evidence anyways, because they're mad the search didn't turn up anything incriminating, and his life gets ruined fighting against their retaliation for years, with no consequences for the actual offenders.
Lack of evidence.
what? I’m not allowed to have a new phone?
It's one thing to argue, even vehemently, that this should not be a felony (either as a matter of fact in this case, or as a matter of just law). But granting that it is or is liable to be prosecuted as such, I strongly recommend against giving advice on how to commit a felony and get away with it.
Definitely booting into a decoy system beats an automatic wipe.
Graphene thought of this but concluded there's no way to make it plausible enough and properly secure.
> and during that time quietly erase the user's actual data.
You only need to delete the necessary key. The 'actual' data should just look like random bits.
Let’s not devise ways for people to break the law while evading detection, shall we?
Let's. "When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty."
Is there a way to implement this on my Android phone?
Instead of decoy passcode why not have secret passcode to access your illicit data? Then your normal passcode looks legit, while your illicit passcode keeps data leaks, zero days, cp, state secrets, manifestos, money laundering, etc, and the partition is encrypted at rest.
Cops collaborate with tech corps all the time now. Generational churn means the cops now are not tech illiterate Barney Fife's
They’re GenXers and Millennials who grew up with this shit and would likely see the bullet point in the press release. Would not be shocked if large departments have someone on retainer or staff to track tech updates
HN crowd continues to display a complete lack of awareness that society moved on from this crowds 15 minutes of fame that was the 2010s
While I agree with your sentiment, I have to imagine that the decision makers are still older and more out of touch?
Decision makers are never going to be responsible for such low level clerical work as reading every tech company product release.
I read a pretty compelling argument by a lawyer that we're looking at this the wrong way. (I Am Not A Lawyer)
Their point was that if the law is knocking on your door to legally search your house, and you have records of your criminal empire printed out in boxes in your attic, or just non-illegal things you don't want people to see, and you burn those papers while the law waits out front, you're guilty of destroying evidence. The fact that this is all digital changes nothing.
The problem is with the legality of the search, not the charge of destroying evidence.
Destroying evidence is legal all day long, even with the law waiting out front, unless some other precondition is attached to that evidence destroying. One thing that makes it illegal is (over-simplifying) destroying it when you knew you had a duty to retain it.
To the legal search example, suppose the police frequently stop by your house to discuss neighborhood gremlins. If they happened to accidentally see the boxes of evidence you'd be in trouble. You're allowed to destroy them though, and you might have a habit of destroying evidence for each of these gremlin chats. Doing so is legal.
Later, the police show up with a warrant (your example). If you think you're doing your normal gremlin evidence destroying and not blocking that warrant, destroying that evidence is still legal even with the police waiting on your porch to legally, forcibly search your house. The _intent_ behind your actions, at least in this case, is a core component of the crime.
Mind you, nobody will believe you, so you'll still have a hard time in court proving it (this is mildly in your favour because it's actually the prosecution's duty to prove your intent rather than your duty to prove lack of intent, but they're not exactly going to have a hard time convincing a jury that when you destroyed a bunch of evidence with police on your porch with a warrant it was because of that warrant), but it's still legal.
> Destroying evidence is legal all day long
Absolutely not the case.
(edited to use a better reference)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519
> Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
"... or in contemplation of..."
And...
https://www.subjecttoinquiry.com/2014/04/obstruction-of-cont...
And...
https://www.subjecttoinquiry.com/2014/04/obstruction-of-cont...
-----
The defendant need not know a matter was pending or within federal jurisdiction. Instead, the “knowingly” element refers only to the obstructive conduct. United States v. Moyer, 674 F.3d 192, 208 (3rd Cir. 2012). The federal nature of the statute’s prohibition is a jurisdictional requirement, but not a substantive element under Section 1519. United States v. McRae, 702 F.3d 806, 834 (5th Cir. 2012).
No nexus requirement. Given that an investigation or matter within federal jurisdiction need not be initiated or even pending at the time of the obstructive conduct, the government need not prove any connection between the alleged obstructive conduct and the federal matter. Moyer, at 209; United States v. Gray, 692 F.3d 514, 519-20 (6th Cir. 2012).
Materiality is not an element. As an example, falsification through omission from a log or report can support a conviction, without proof of the materiality of the omission. Powell, at 356; Moyer, at 207-08.
I'm curious if/why you think these considerations apply to this situation. This isn't a case of someone routinely destroying data and happening to do so right before a border check. Isn't this a case where the person wiping their phone right before a search, or actually tricking border patrol into wiping it, should know he had "a duty to retain it"?
Not necessarily, no, it's not clear that the person knew they had that duty. If you strongly believe the search is illegal, e.g. after being denied a lawyer, you might not think you're destroying evidence illegally.
> Destroying evidence is legal all day long
Again, I'm not a lawyer, so don't listen to me, but obstruction of justice is a thing, so I'm not sure how you can say that.
> The _intent_ behind your actions, at least in this case, is a core component of the crime.
Agreed, but irrelevant to the physical vs. digital question.
> how can I say that
The exact way I did, with an additional clause afterward appropriately scoping the statement and thereby not stating something overly broad :) The point is that destroying evidence, by itself, is not a crime. Additional elements are required.
> irrelevant to some other question
That's true. I just saw something not quite true (your police on the porch example) and thought somebody might find the extra nuance interesting.
Interestingly, digital vs physical _does_ also matter a little in a few ways (e.g., whether it's even evidence in the first place if it's digital). However, as that's worked its way through the court system over the years, it is practically true that in most cases you're right, at least as it pertains to this charge AFAICT; digital evidence has similar properties to physical evidence in the eyes of the courts.
Once police open an investigation or once there is a lawsuit served, destroying evidence relevant to that lawsuit is illegal.
The question here is whether the police were in investigation mode. I believe it is an overreach to claim that everybody at a border was going through an investigation. And it is also a overreach that everyone who is selected for search at the border is under investigation.
> Once police open an investigation or once there is a lawsuit served, destroying evidence relevant to that lawsuit is illegal.
An investigation doesn't need to have begun. All that's required is that you intended to destroy evidence in the event of an investigation.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519
> Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
"... or in contemplation of..."
And...
https://www.subjecttoinquiry.com/2014/04/obstruction-of-cont...
-----
The defendant need not know a matter was pending or within federal jurisdiction. Instead, the “knowingly” element refers only to the obstructive conduct. United States v. Moyer, 674 F.3d 192, 208 (3rd Cir. 2012). The federal nature of the statute’s prohibition is a jurisdictional requirement, but not a substantive element under Section 1519. United States v. McRae, 702 F.3d 806, 834 (5th Cir. 2012).
No nexus requirement. Given that an investigation or matter within federal jurisdiction need not be initiated or even pending at the time of the obstructive conduct, the government need not prove any connection between the alleged obstructive conduct and the federal matter. Moyer, at 209; United States v. Gray, 692 F.3d 514, 519-20 (6th Cir. 2012).
Materiality is not an element. As an example, falsification through omission from a log or report can support a conviction, without proof of the materiality of the omission. Powell, at 356; Moyer, at 207-08.
No, "knowingly" destroying evidence associated with that investigation is illegal. After a lawsuit is served, yes, it's probably pretty easy to prove ill intent. Opening an investigation may or may not suffice, and whether the police were in investigation mode is not the whole question. The prosecution has many individual elements they need to prove, _including_ intent.
But the issue here is the original charges were literally made up. There was no evidence whatsoever of him having anything related to CSAM on his device. At this point any cop can ask anyone to hand over their phone to search for CSAM.
I can sort of see what they mean if I squint some. Sure, destroying evidence to avoid a warrant is a crime and people understand this.
OTOH this was a warrantless search, I’d argue this is materially different. AFAICT, people can still refuse to provide a password to evidence that may incriminate them. I also think scope is much, much larger than searching a home or office. The kind of data people have in their phone is far more private than the kind of stuff people would keep in a filing cabinet and there is far more of it. And a phone is easier to search. I mean, that’s why they put this guy on a list and waited for him to travel somewhere instead getting a warrant.
Myself, I find this kind of searching of citizens to be pretty crazy and I can’t believe it’s allowed. My hope is this case brings this practice to an end.
>I find this kind of searching of citizens to be pretty crazy
Agreed, and my original point: the issue is the search, not the charge being related to digital or physical information.
What if it didn't "destroy" the evidence, but instead encrypted it in a way that couldn't be decrypted at that moment?
Or if it copied a snapshot some remote and inaccessible server while bricking the phone?
The digital nature of the evidence does make this different than physical files.
Evidence has not been destroyed. And if we are using that analogy the key to the locked box has been thrown away. No evidence was destroyed.
The phone was wiped, no?
Is there any evidence that evidence has been destroyed? To use the analogy I might just decide I don't want anyone reading my personal diary and burn it. It doesn't mean I destroyed evidence. If you knew it was evidence you wouldn't need to read it...
All Archive pages, when accessed from Italy, now are blocked by the Government:
"PAGINA INTERDETTA DAL CENTRO NAZIONALE PER IL CONTRASTO DELLA PEDOPORNOGRAFIA ONLINE (C.N.C.P.O.)"
“PAGE BLOCKED BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR COMBATING ONLINE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY (C.N.C.P.O.)”
Oh, we live in an interesting age.
It’s DNS-based blocking. Don’t use your ISP’s DNS.
Use 1.1.1.1 or something else and tell Mrs. Meloni to go suck eggs.
1.1.1.1 has been ordered to comply and is being fined until they do; use your own local resolver (it's not that hard).
We can research on what happened, but it is pretty obvious...
You are nonetheless talking about the .ph - only that.
And: italy has done much, much, 1000000 orders much worse (Gutenberg).
for context:
https://ooni.org/post/2021-italy-blocks-gutenberg-book-publi...
I am currently in Italy (just passing through) and was able to open the archive link with the article
If you're using roaming on your cellular plan, all your traffic is routed over VPN to your home country, so local blocks don't work.
(That's one of the reasons why it's trivially easy for foreign visitors to China to bypass the Great Firewall.)
If you were on wifi, that's notably interesting.
I was on the resort’s WiFi, no vpn. What is strange maybe is that if I search my outgoing ip address, the resort is listed as the ISP
We can tell OP is using local or unencrypted DNS because they got DNS-redirected to a message.
If you have DoH configured at either OS or browser level then you will not see a message: the site will either work, or it will error out if the IP is blocked.
If you are using an alternative DNS provider over unencrypted DNS then either outcome is possible.
I'm not sure that roaming still works that way. It used to. I think you get configuration from your home network but everyone involved tries to get your traffic onto the internet at the closest opportunity.
Then you probably had a home country IP and they filter based on IP.
I’m in Italy now and I can open the Archive page with the article.
Change your DNS in your browser to DNS over HTTPS. I use mullivad's server.
Legal question: if you had whole-disk encryption, and the duress password just zeroized the decryption key, would that be "destroying evidence?" Especially if there was a recovery possible but not instantly available, such as a Yubikey in a safe deposit box in a bank. That would take a subpoena to get, and there is an opportunity to challenge the subpoena in court first. Not instantly at the border.
Something like that should be a standard feature of a secure phone.
If you want actual legal advice pay for an actual lawyer. You aren’t going to get it asking a bunch of randoms on a tech forum.
Since we’re techies we tend to think about technological nuances and have a certain literal frame of mind (eg “They can’t make it illegal for me to just type the wrong pin” is the type of thinking I’m talking about here) whereas in law weird precedents and your intent really matter so you really need expert advice and either way, you are throwing yourself at the mercy of a stochastic process that depends on a bunch of fallible humans along the way many of whom have the power to make your life extremely miserable.
Technicalities of destroying the data vs destroying the key to the data, destroying the data when you have a backup etc may matter a lot to us but may not mean anything in an actual judicial process depending on how it goes.
It seems to me if you have data you don’t want subject to seizure at a border it is best not to travel over the border carrying that data. If you have a backup (in your scenario), why not restore your phone from that backup after you have travelled, and not cross the border with anything that is likely to be a problem if seized? Then you’re not putting yourself at risk from this process.
I am a lawyer (this is not legal advice) and agree with the main thrust of this comment.
The law is not “hackable.” Ultimately people are making decisions about guilt and punishment. And judges really, really don’t take kindly to defendants who think they’re trying to outsmart the court.
> The law is not “hackable.”
The point the sibling comments miss is that for the hoi polloi, this one-weird-trick does not work because such laws has been written to broaden the scope as much as possible by heavily relying on intent instead of the micro mechanics (which keep changing) AND the enforcers focus on the intent. For the rich and wealthy, the law may be the same but the enforcement is wildly different because they absolutely have the enforcers on their side. I bet such people don't get strip searched like the unwashed masses as they roll off their private jets.
i used to work for a rich one like that ~20 years ago. we were walking through the border without a word, boarding his private jet, and crossing the Schengen border.
> The law is not “hackable.”
It absolutely is. The rich and powerful do it all the time.
it's not a hack, it's a feature
Probably not in the same sense of "one weird trick" though.
Paying for something is not really a hack, because at least in this case, it’s the system working as intended.
Not sure what you mean by "in this case." I'm pretty sure that the founders intended the Bill of Rights to apply everywhere including the border.
> Paying for something is not really a hack
Although bribery is a felony in itself
> it’s the system working as intended.
Maybe it is
Second lawyer here, well - ex-lawyer, I'm saying the first Law Talking Guy is 100% right.
It is somewhat hackable, but not to the extent that a computer is. Sometimes laws have some unintended loopholes that can be exploited for benefit if it isn't something obviously malicious.
But there are often vaguer higher level principles that can stop the fun, involving concept like "reasonable person" and "good faith" which are interpreted by humans. But this also doesn't happen always. Sometimes people do get away on technicalities, though many may suspect corruption in those cases, but sometimes the law is indeed powerless against certain novel tricks. There is no general answer.
At the same time, courts regularly get outsmarted without knowing it. The key is that they don't know it. Right? So don't brag about how you outsmarted the police or the courts, especially not to the police or the courts. I am not a lawyer and you are, but I hope I'm right about this point.
Then why have circumventions of the 4th amendment not been shut down immediately in court (this specific case, ALPRs contracted by police departments)? Same question for the first amendment with the FCC using license leverage to control speech?
It’s a provision not circumvention, also not a hack. /s
Not a lawyer, but the law is hackable in a sense. Interpretation sets precedent and strategic litigation is common.
There are also novel situations for which precedent is set and becomes defacto law. Personally I think this is a big issue with how the US works.
Is the government not hacking the law with its weird interpretations and assertions?
If the law isn't hackable what do you call what these billionaires and religious fundamentalists are doing to it right now?
You've answered your own question. The law is hackable for certain kinds of people. If you're not one of the protected categories, it's prudent to consider it unhackable.
The interesting thing is that the "don't carry the data" scenario of wiping your phone and restoring it after you're across the border is not functionally different from the "just don't carry the keys across the border" scenario. I would be comfortable with a dd archive of my encrypted phone contents in an short-lived S3 bucket that I could restore with a simple passphrase-derived key, for example. It's hard for the law to recognize that they haven't achieved anything useful by forcing me to do that instead of just lose the key.
One thing this case makes me wonder is if the government would have a problem with someone walking across the border with a completely virgin phone. They must have wiped it, right? Would they try to prosecute? How could they possibly know the defendant in this case actually had anything on his phone before the duress code was entered?
For your virgin phone scenario: in practice they'll probably reverse burden of proof and call it a day.
Or just subpoena AWS for a copy of their shit and dump them in a hole until it’s unlocked. Yay america.
If you actually have a virgin phone, there's no data on Amazon to subpoena.
Wasn't this about entering a duress pin? Therefore, the law hasn't decided on pre-border key wipe. Lots wipe their phone... yet no actions taken.
I believe the duress password reboots the phone. They likely know this, hence the different outcome.
It's immensely different. Leaps and bounds different. Why?
Well, once you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process. The phone is at this point evidence. It was not evidence before. It was not evidence a month ago. It really is just that simple.
Now, they could view prior wipe as suspicious, but as a US citizen they cannot prevent entry. And they may be able to seize your phone(suspicious!). Which is why simply stating the truth politely "I believe in privacy, and loath government poking into the private affairs of citizens" might help down the road if you want to sue. Might.
Border guards protect the realm, after all, and have wide latitude.
From my side, my truthful argument for wipe has always been that all of my buisness clients, emails, data might be on my phone. I have a duty to protect their privacy.
Making reasonable statements takes the edge off of 'suspicious', and the more people who wipe? The less suspicious it becomes.
The biggest thibg anyone could do, is make 100% restorable backups for non-rooted Android a thing. It's doable, but a PITA right now. Make it one-click, perfect, reliable, and more will do it.
And then it isn't unusual, it's normal, and the suspicious elements vanishes.
Of course, as Google is mired in asshattery lately, I'd expect any attempts to protect us all, such as ASOP patches or bug reports, would be fought against and ignored. Helping the world, protecting travellers, political dissidents, not on their radar.
They even fight such things.
Because in this day and age, Google does not have your back. Instead, they shove knives there.
> Well, once you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process
In none of my scenarios am I describing actions to be taken after you have been told to unlock the phone. I’m talking about before you ever approach the border. There is no functional difference between wiping a key which encrypts the entire device (but leaving the encrypted data in place) vs wiping the entire device, from a security point of view, except one requires twiddling fewer bits to restore the data.
My point is that the law is unable to see that equivalence, but it is also unable to compel a different result. If choice A and B are identical for security purposes but the government can technically prosecute A but not B, all they have accomplished is forcing people to choose B.
The Aftermath: Because the encryption keys are already instantly nuked at the hardware level, the phone boots directly into the Google Pixel recovery or factory-fresh setup screen.
It's exceptionally apparent you've caused destructive behaviour, after the phone is in evidence.
None of the other scenarios, show your duress pin factory resetting the device, then dropping into a setup screen, after the border agent confiscated it. So much of tbe law is intent, coupled with knowledge of your situation.
There's nothing new here really. Throw a diary into the fireplace at home? Fine! Travel with a blank diary? Fine!
Grqb it from a border guard and and rip it up? Trouble.
It's not about the state of the device at the border. It's intent to change the state after confiscation.
Google could not care less; this feature does not make money and adds support burden.
well, i guess the writing was on the wall, so to say, pretty much from the beginning: "don't be evil".
They deprecated that one.
> It's immensely different. Leaps and bounds different. Why? [O]nce you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process.
From a factual point of view, rather than the narrow legal one offered, it is not materially different to delete a phone in anticipation of a future search. In most cases, outside the customs context, it's just harder for the government to prove obstruction of justice.
What's different here is that the government only had a right to search the phone in relation to the border, and the government used that right not just to search for contraband like the law anticipates. If someone dumped their contraband and made it disappear before actually crossing a border, would that be an evidence-related crime? What if they thought about a contraband conspiracy, and then intentionally forgot? What if the customs office presented a form to all travelers, well in advance of formal screening, that they must preserve their contraband henceforth? And then they decided not to smuggle it? Interesting questions legally, but factually, considering criminal charges in those scenarios over the evidentiary situation would be pretty silly.
So then, when you delete purportedly contraband data at the border, have you really just done a public service of removing one more potentially contraband item from border inspection? Or is it that once any of us create data in the vicinity of a border or in a context where we might approach a border in the future with the access device or storage medium, do we all have a duty to preserve it for inspection until the customs authorities get around to inspecting us? Or is it just that this series of hypotheticals illustrate that we have here an epic mash-up of misinterpretation here?
One can’t help but wonder if a motivated DOJ could twist a “destruction of the evidence” charge out of someone dumping a kilo of cocaine just before traveling to the US.
Maybe just don't enter a duress pin, causing the phone to blatantly wipe, and rrboot, and enter a setup screen, right after a customs officer confiscates your potential "contraband", and demands the pin?
I mean really, this act is exceptionally blunt, clear, and overt. All this hand waving won't change things.
> we tend to think about technological nuances and have a certain literal frame of mind
see the colored bits essay for an ur-example of this
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
100% this
People here thinks in technicalities and what if, and while technicalities apply in legal cases, they're not like a lot of people here think they work (quite the contrary!)
This is not "well if the gov had a quantum computer they could decode" this is not how the legal world decided things.
What about the opposite? remove the tech from the hypotetical.
Say you carry a valise with a lock. They ask for the key, you truthfully answer that you do not have with you. They burn the valise and lose all the contents.
So, are you in jail? or can you sue them for destroying your stuff?
What the point of this hypothetical?
In real life they would break the lock on your valise and return it to you bound together with tape.
and how if this similar to how a duress password work? say breaking the lock burn the contents somehow, to prevent documents falling into thief's hands for the sake of the comparison.
You didn’t tamper with the potential evidence; they did.
right. that's my point. why if they try to guess your password and end up wiping data, then magically you're guilty?
Intent matters in a court of law. A judge or a jury will consider:
- did you intend for the data to be destroyed in an eventual search?
- probably yes, because you went to the trouble to set up a duress password
- is it reasonably that you mixed up the two passwords? No, because only an idiot would make them similar and you're clearly no idiot, because you were able to set up a phone with a duress password.
- hence, you intentionally made the officer wipe your data, and you will be held liable.
It doesn't make any difference if the destroyed potential evidence is physical or digital.
The law as written is stupid, but that does not mean courts are stupid.
It is rather funny to look at how some programmers believe they can "trick" the law. It does not work like computer code!
The law means nothing. The law is "interpreted" by judges. If the government wants you to be guilty, they will find a way to make that happen. They don't care about the rule of law. The US has a 99% conviction rate, highest ever in recorded history.
You are misunderstanding the conviction rate. Only ~2% of cases actually go to trial, and at trial there is ~80% conviction rate.
There are ~4x as many cases dismissed by judges before getting to trial. And the vast majority (90%) of defendants enter into plea bargains.
Prosecutors only bring charges when they feel they have a strong case. There are many many cases which are never pursued because of this, and people also get upset about that.
Many countries do not have a plea bargain system the way the US does. And if you look at conviction rates at trial, they are smack in line with much of e.g. Western Europe.
wouldn't you go into plea bargain if you knew there's 80% chance of conviction of you don't?
At some point the high conviction rate acts as a deterrent from not entering a plea. IMHO this is the case in the US and has been for quite some time.
That’s repeating the misunderstanding: the conviction rate is high because the government voluntarily drops or reduces charges when their case is weak. You have to think of it as “80% of the cases the government thought it would win” rather than “80% of all cases ever considered”.
What does lead to pleas is the expense of defending a case: if you acknowledge some guilt, you might decide to accept a lesser charge rather than exhaust your finances with no guarantee that you won’t get that lesser charge anyway.
Conviction rate only measures cases brought to trial. The overwhelming fraction of cases do not go to trial.
It's the other way around: conviction rate includes plea bargains.
Convictions at trial are much lower.
I do like the idea of forcing due process to access an encryption key. I'm not sure if that idea is compatible with current law, but it seems just at the very least.
IANAL, but I understand that part of the problem is, prior to official admission to the US, you have fewer rights even if you're a US citizen.
Also not a lawyer, but some of that applies to anyone within 100 miles of a border, a coastline.
This isn't the case, but if that rule also applied to airports, then I wonder what portion of the population is safe.
I am not a lawyer.
1. Intent matters. If you give the password to a Customs and Border Protection agent which deletes all the data, your intent was to deceive them and either delete evidence, or at least fail to comply with their request. CBP has wide powers of search.
2. CBP has broad remit to deny entry to any non-citizen for any and no reason. Even if not illegal to provide a duress password, they can and will send non-citizens back home.
This guy's been charged with obstruction not destroying evidence so they could still charge you with obstruction for failing to give a password that opens the phone up.
U.S. citizens are going to need obtain a burner phone before returning, and load it with the absolute minimum to load boarding passes, etc., perhaps some reading material or a movie to watch on the plane, and be prepared to share full credentials for thing at the border.
(I used to do some travel patterns where taking a certain client laptop wasn’t an option. It was an absolute gigantic pain for the type of work I did, but it was just too risky to have a laptop seized and be expected to input credentials.)
I’ve been asked to hand over my phone when I entered India as a visitor with a valid visa. Yes it was a burner phone. Yes the officer questioned me after seeing only 7 photos in the entire Photos app. It was very obvious that it was a burner phone. I didn’t deceive the officer, instead I just nicely explained why this was a burner phone.
Yep, travelling outside your country of origin, expect that your phone/laptop/ect is subject to search. Anything on you is, it's literally stated. Want to push against that? Sure, makes sense, but just carry a burner phone/device and not worry about it. Literally what the US government recommends when traveling to places like China.
I think it's enough to shut down you phone. Then it needs a pin, and you're entitled to not give that over, I believe. So you should be safe, apart from some kind of rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
> So you should be safe, apart from some kind of rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
There are vendors that sell the technology to adversarially access phone data, the "Before First Unlock" is the safest state a phone can be, but it's not infallible. The safest option is to have a burner or factory-reset phone with nothing on it, even if the hack succeeds.
I've worked with Cellebrite, the industry standard in IT forensics for unlocking and imaging phones. It just runs a series of known exploits. PIN lock, data encryption and regular updates will beat it most of the time.
When I interact with the general public, I get a nice reminder that most people don't do a decent PIN lock, don't have encryption on unless it's the default for that platform, and don't do regular updates. Lots of reasons why (phone is out of space to do an update; not signed in properly to Apple / Google account; kids use their phone so they want an easy to remember PIN on it, etc. etc.)
> I've worked with Cellebrite
Any chance you want to do a public service and publish the latest compatibility matrix?
Just joking, obviously…
Before First Unlock with recent hardware and an up to date OS is probably sufficiently infallible for an average person. I wouldn't want to rely on it if I was engaged in espionage, but for someone who won't get the NSA pulled into the case, I'd be pretty confident. This leaked Cellebrite support matrix shows that BFU was secure against them for iPhones that were nearly four years old at the time, and I doubt it's become significantly worse since then: https://ia800405.us.archive.org/32/items/inseyets-offline-uf...
If you don't give a pin, they can seize your devices (Andrew Tate on his 1st visit to Florida said that he refused to give pin and they seized phone and laptop)
They can't keep them, you'll get the devices back. Use a temp phone in the mean time.
Sad that we have to accept this as a risk of international travel, but here we are.
They can absolutely keep them. Or they can just "lose" them "accidentally". Who exactly would force them to give them back? Or put another way, who exactly will punish them if they break the law?
They can’t keep them permanently, but unfortunately they have in the past kept them from some people for years, until the hardware was past its useful life. It’s a good idea to only travel with electronics you don’t mind losing (and not just because of this).
You have a worldview that’s incompatible with the reality of the current US legal system where things work the way you believe they should, rather than the way they actually do.
Morality and direct commonsense interpretations of law do not apply when there are literally unlimited resources stacked against you. But, assuming you can wait the potential ~10y to receive your device back that it will take to get your device returned to you, good on you. If you think that the current SCOTUS will rule in your favor, good on you.
The reality is, we live in a time where the most horrendous interpretation of the law is the one that will happen. And it won’t be in your favor.
I don’t see how what you said contradicts anything I said, and I suspect you didn’t even read it. Yes, people have before had their devices seized for years, and courts wouldn’t return it sooner. That’s literally what I said.
I must have replied to the wrong comment. I swear I read something else. But maybe not.
My bad.
No problem, I have also misread a comment or two before, although I’ve been lucky and had time to delete my reply before the deadline.
I think you're arguing with someone who agrees with you.
Honestly, I think this is still fine for most people. The probability of a border agent asking me to unlock my phone is very, very low. The inconvenience of using a burner phone is high.
If they do take my phone (completely shut down, unlikely they'll be able to break in) and it's gone forever, that sucks, but then I get a new phone, restore from a backup, and move on with my life. Given that the probability of getting to this point is very low, I'm comfortable with the risk.
But sure, if I was at high risk of being detained at the border due to my profession, country of origin, ethnicity, etc., I'd probably look at this differently.
It's not sad, it's always been the case, and just expanding areas that are implementing it. It seems a lot of people here haven't travelled, or especially haven't travelled to 'restrictive' places in the past.
I've been to Russia, China (about ten times,) central Asian -stans, various parts of South America, Africa, etc. My phones and laptops (plural because I travel with >2/ea, and it looks kind of weird,) have never been inspected.
I really only hear these stories when people travel to the US, lol. It's especially sad+funny (darkly comic, say,) that the guy in OP is a US Citizen traveling back to the US.
They’ll keep them until you sue. A lawsuit costs more than the devices.
You will lose them.
With Graphene that's to be considered reasonably safe if your PIN is unguessable. The wrong PIN delay is enforced by TPM and they don't (yet) have anything other than brute force.
That seems like a wildly different scenario to me. The OP is about a guy who has not committed any crimes. Andrew Tate is a known predator and CSAM peddler, with an active warrant in several countries.
I'll take that risk. It's pretty unlikely, and if it happens, having to buy a new phone is not the worst thing in the world.
> Then it needs a pin
A compromise to this is that many phones have a "lockdown" mode, where it isn't fully off but refuses to accept biometrics until a code/pattern is used to bring it to a more day-to-day mode.
It's less-secure than being fully off, but it also means if you do need to access your phone you can do so more-quickly.
Just reboot it. The disk is encrypted until you unlock it.
That’s probably why they’ve been pushing the MPC app heavily.
Only a matter of time until mandatory key disclosure like the UK and other countries. This overrides even the right to silence.
If you’re a U.S. citizen: CBP cannot deny you entry to the United States merely because you refuse to unlock the phone. If you’re a non-citizen seeking admission: refusal is much riskier.
The important wrinkle is that CBP’s published policy expressly guarantees that a person being admitted as a U.S. citizen won’t be denied entry solely because CBP couldn’t inspect the device. It doesn’t give lawful permanent resident (green card holders) that same explicit statement. Instead, it says refusal by a “foreign national” can be considered in an admissibility determination.
Isn't the guarantee for citizens a bit stronger than CBP's policy? I don't think they can lawfully deny entry of a citizen, period.
They cannot (lawfully) deny entry. But they can admit you and then immediately detain and/or arrest you.
Sure, if they have a warrant or probable cause, just like any other law enforcement officer.
In theory, yes, but in practice they can do whatever they want, and suing them after the fact is going to be expensive, and have a high probability of not working out for you.
When interacting with border officials (or any LEOs, for that matter), be polite, don't get hostile or aggressive, but also be firm and don't volunteer any information that you're not required to give.
Not unlocking your phone is probable cause. Non-criminals readily submit for inspection. (We can fix this by refusing inspection even when we are not criminals)
this only applies if they don't refuse to acknowledge your papers as valid and/or they haven't previously put you on some hidden list of people of interest, in which case the instance where you get to prove you're who you say you are will be mediated, like the rest of the (as per the current system) nonpeople, by as many layers of humilliation and risk to your life and health as they can place.
Giving up knowledge (password) is something that is typically scrutinized at the border as well. Had he just handed over the phone and the phone had abilities to self destruct if tampered with (e.g too many incorrect pin entries) -- well the gov's case wouldn't been much harder. If they seized property and accidently destroyed the data, then that's on them.
You are correct, you have to give up the phone but can't be compelled to give up the password, and you'd get it back some indeterminate amount of time later.
It's actually been on the books for a while (decades at least) that customs can search you at the border without a warrant even if you are a citizen.
This case seems to have become a big 'Trump bad' poster child (people are calling the US East Germany in these comments...), but if this exact scenario happened at least in the last two decades (I found an example upholding the searches from 2004) then it would at least be possible to charge them with deleting evidence. Even this probably would have been nothing if he refused to give up his password, not being required to provide a password has been upheld for years. They can seize your phone for some time but I'm unsure on the times they ask and then just let you move on when they find out your a citizen.
This is precisely why you should use a pin and not biometrics. You CAN be forced to use biometrics (“something you have”), but NOT a password (“something you know”)
Now you know you know, so use a pin
As everything on your phone should be backed up, you could just wipe your phone to new.
Then log in with another temp account and use that for border pass etc, and then after border checks log back into your normal account?
Just get a boarding pass from the counter old school style. They still print them.
Laser printed boarding passes are so much more reliable anyway and you never have to worry about recharging them.
I wouldn't really want to deal with the suspicions of having a freshly-wiped phone, or the suspicions of having no phone at all.
A proper burner phone has basic usage on it. Link it to a Gmail account you don't use for anything else so you can have your ridesharing apps on it. Just enough for travel purposes, but nothing else.
If you really have to, have some social media accounts on it too and give them a basic amount of usage. Snap photos of the country you went on the trip to, etc.
Like every citizen is a Jason Born, or Richard Kimble, what an assumption.
The tactic/behavior is atrocious, but the vast majority of people’s phones contain absolutely nothing of interest to anyone. Mindless content and games and mundane text and emails. Even banking info, oh they bough some burritos and Cheerios and corn and gas and Cheetos
I might have had the same thought as you when I was in my early 20s, for reasons I won’t divulge.
In any case, the guy will walk with the good lawyers he’s undoubtedly able to obtain after this exposure.
Why would they need to do that?
While Americans deserve better (and more clearly articulated) protections, this is a retarded take. The U.S. does an EXCELLENT job protecting the rights of citizens and non-citizens, even at the border, relative to other countries in the world.
The British (until recently a civilized people) will throw you in jail for refusing to unlock. Or for a tweet the powers that be don't like. Not to mention China, India, Russia...
A very strong immune response, like the one we see in this topic, is exactly what the Americans need to preserve their robust understanding of and de facto access to their rights. But let's not pretend they're doing a bad job. They're doing a great job, and they could be doing better.
leave electronics at home. never take electronics to any airport unless you don't care if everything is read. your only option now.
or have a good enough decoy or encryption system in place. Such as pressing a button to lock or replace key documents but keep the rest intact. So what looks like a sensitive document omits key information but still appears to be legit to observer.
That's probably a bit overkill. TSA doesn't have nearly as much power as CBP, so it's only a concern when coming back across the international border.
Its overkill until it happens
the best decoy is a cheap burner phone that you only use for travel purposes
I used to play around on projects adjacent to Tor and TailsOS, and had an idea for a setup I was researching. It's a little intense and probably has annoying failure modes, but sharing in case anyone else finds it helpful:
- Tasker is an automation app for setting up rules for triggers and actions. It allows extension apps to be created to add new triggers and actions.
- someone at one point made an extension to add an action for wiping or factory resetting when triggered
- there was an existing extension (or core feature) to trigger when certain signals are lost or found (e.g., wifi signals, Bluetooth LE beacons, etc)
So the idea is to carry a BLE beacon (any "item tracking" one works) on your keychain, and an unassuming faraday cage pocket alongside it. If you want to wipe your phone, slip the fob into the pocket, the signal disappears, and your phone wipes. And if you don't have the keychain on you, just refuse to open it right away, as when they put the phone itself in a faraday cage (to prevent it from being remote wiped), they cause the signal to be lost, and it gets reset.
Not sure if all the pieces still exist (I dont think the tasker extension for wiping existed outside a forum post...)
Or keep it in a faraday bag and have the phone wipe if it sees it. If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.
Oh hey, I like this variant! So... both the BLE beacon and the phone have a faraday cage, and if they ever appear together outside their cages, the phone wipes?
Perhaps less likely to go wrong than my original proposal when living normal life, as it might wipe if the BLE signal randomly gets lost.
It would be nicer if you could leave phone in cage during security, and remove beacon while loading airport trays ("remove all electronics from their cases..."). the only chance for a failure mode is only when you're going through security, and have the fob outside its case..
But you'd need to be able to leave your phone in the faraday cage pouch while going thru security, which is only ok if they don't notice... (maybe they commonly don't notice small faraday pouches aren't empty... Maybe they wouldn't if you had a secondary mobile device...)
I was imagining only the BLE beacon living in one of those little faraday pouches people put their key fobs in. They should be pretty much transparent passing through the x-ray and a pouch with an airtag in it wouldn't raise any suspicion at all at the airport.
Only once you're getting invasively searched would they (ideally) dump the pouch out into the tray with your phone.
This depends on the beacon being visible. If they just take the phone and walk away, because that's where they think the evidence is, it won't wipe.
When I've gotten secondary screening the first thing they do is take all my belongings and rifle through them on a table. That seems to be standard practice and I'm sure it was step 1 in Tunick's ordeal.
Both approaches have situations they wouldn't work in. If you're extra paranoid you could do both.
> If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.
Isn't that the same issue here that resulted in felony charges? Border agent was given a duress PIN and wiped the phone for the owner. Now owner is charged.
It's not the exact same situation. Whether it's similar enough to be prosecuted or convicted is a different question.
I don't see how. Regardless of how you feel about the lawfulness of the overall situation, Tunick gave an agent false information which resulted in the phone being wiped. That's intent.
This requires no action whatsoever from the phone's owner, you could even be unconscious/dead and it would still work.
The intent in that scenario is to wipe your phone (destroy evidence) when a bag is searched by federal agents.
I think there's a version of this where you can reasonably say you forgot you'd set this up. Like if they disassemble your whole bag, lay the BLE beacon out, and wipe the phone... You can claim it's a theft deterrent for thieves who might steal your bag and rummage thru it?
I think this sums it up for me:
- wipe-on-lost-signal = easier to claim as legitimate anti-theft mechanism. Harder to claim you forgot about it (because you'd have the actively live a life where they don't lose signal)
- wipe-on-found-signal = easier to claim as accident. ("I forgot that little faraday keychain was in my bag, and haven't touched it in years since I was on company project X"). Harder to claim it's a general anti-theft mechanism, as it requires a threat model of someone laying all your stuff out together on a table.
EDIT: Maybe it's in a little pouch attached to the phone itself, and they think it's a find-my-object tracker to inspect, but it's actually a beacon that wipes on detection. But yes, this is getting a little ridiculous in terms of plausible deniability :)
I like the idea of a phone that automatically wipes itself if I don’t act to stop it. I wonder about the legality of that if the duress code is considered “destroying evidence.”
Action vs inaction seems like an important distinction.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040537
I used to contribute to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USBKill
Ah I recall I used to see the creator around :) thanks for your work!
Regarding the motivation for usbkill mentioned in the article: I too was motivated to think on this stuff in relation to my sense of injustice around Ross Ulbrecht, and wanting to think of some way that someone in his position could avoid getting caught. One creative variant in my thinking involved embedding the BLE beacon inside a rubber ball that could be launched and lost track of. Or maybe embedded in heel of a shoe and ditched in transit haha
Critically, don't brag about doing so. Don't tell the cops you wiped your phone. If asked, it's just a blank phone you brought (maybe you have a plausible excuse like gifting it).
With no third party apps you can set an iPhone to wipe itself after 10 failed passcode attempts.
US law enforcement is well aware of it.
They're also now well aware of the GrapheneOS duress PIN/password feature. It was designed to work against an attacker aware of it by acting as a deterrence. If they're aware of the feature, it discourages them from trying to coerce a PIN/password and attempt to unlock with it. We aren't fond of features depending on an attacker being unaware of them and this isn't one of those.
Pixels have a high quality secure element enforcing a maximum of 20 unique attempts to derive the encryption keys for each separately encrypted profile. There's also very aggressive rate limiting between the attempts. It filters out duplicate attempts by temporarily remembering the previous 5 unique attempts to make the rate limiting more usable. A misremembered PIN/password repeatedly entered over and over will only use up 1 attempt.
Android does have standard support for enabling wiping after N attempts and an open source app can be used to set a configurable limit rather than specifically after 10.
tfw face when I leave my phone on the table and go to the restaurant bathroom only to return to a brand new squeaky clean factory reset
Legal Eagle just covered this, it's quite interesting analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU
Great link. The most relevant part for me is the last couple minutes (22:00): it's only against the law to destroy evidence if it can be established that such evidence exists. This feels like a more elaborate version of accidentally losing a stack of papers to a gust of wind just as you hand them over.
1. Was there a lawful entitlement to the papers? 2. Were the papers protected private property? 3. Were the papers released to the wind intentionally? 4. If intentionally released was it expected that they would disappear or simply fall to the ground?
A couple easy technological analogies: 3. "Sorry, I gave you the wrong code by mistake." 4. "I thought it would go to a private guest mode, not delete everything!"
Not even a minute in. "Oh, he's protesting Cop City, got it. This is just police harassment."
Sounds about right to me.
The guy from Game Changer?
Yes. And Paul Refereeno will be the judge in this case
According to the article, he was actually using GrapheneOS and gave the border official the Duress PIN. So I guess technically it was the official that erased the data :-)
Not how the law works. If I put a bomb in a box. It will explode if a certain pin is put in. And you ask ”can I open the box? What is the pin?” And I say ”here is the pin to open it” and the bomb explodes. Do you think I can claim they blew up themselves ?
It's already a crime to build a bomb, so it's a moot point.
Moot to anyone who died, but you'd still be charged with the crime of building a bomb and the crime of murder.
My point is even if it hadn't blown up you would've committed a crime anyway, whereas if you rig a phone to erase its own data upon entering a PIN and the PIN is not entered, you haven't committed a crime. The two situations are different enough not to be analogous.
I think the entire point here is wether erasing a phone can be a crime
I'm saying the opposite, that not erasing a phone is not a crime. Meanwhile, building and not exploding a bomb is a crime.
Let’s try for a less hyperbolic analogy
It's a pretty good analogy. Of course the phone isn't a bomb, but the parent comment's point holds: whose hands inputted the pin is just a technical trivia.
I'd guess the smiley indicates that op meant it as a joke.
Yes. Because law enforcement assumes there's bombs in boxes by default and defers to the bomb squad to understand the box before they touch it.
Why would the bomb squad trust the box owner to help them defuse it? To understand the issue, you have to construct a proper analog.
Sure, you're right that this analogy is bad, because that would never happen.
But if it did, you'd still be on the hook for the bomb, even though technically the LEO set it off through incompetence.
An analogy should not be judged on whether or not it can realistically happen, nor whether it can be manipulated in some way that capitalizes on the differences.
Because the point of an analogy is not to provide an realistic or identical situation. On the contrary, the point of an analogy is to use a different situation in order to illustrate a very narrow similarity and make a point.
If the analogy illustrates and makes that point well, then it succeeds.
I never told you it is a box with a bomb. You just asked if you can have the pin. You can do another example where you give false information with the intent of making another person take an action that they don’t wanna take and would not take unless you had provided false information. You are causing the action to happen. Just like if you yell fire in a theater. You didn’t stamped anyone to death. But your words caused it.
You don't have to tell me a bomb is in the box because it doesn't change the fact that bomb squad is called before officers know what's in the box.
Why would the bomb squad be called after the box is unlocked and the contents revealed?
Why would a bomb squad be called just because I hand over a box to you at home and ask, do you wanna open it? It is a normal box
How is that relevant? We're talking about officers searching you at the border.
A better feature would be a 2nd PIN that unlocks the phone to a secondary profile, which you would leave pretty bare for situations like these.
With some embarrassing porn; something that would make it feel legit and cause a distraction.
A few hundred personal dick pics and they'll be handing it back quickly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49395135
Or smarter yet, not bare. Looks like a normal phone - innocent-looking vacation photos, innocent-looking social media accounts, innocent-looking email....
He is charged with obstruction. Not "erasing data". Was he intentionally trying to hinder a search that was being legally conducted?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice_in_the_...
> Was he intentionally trying to hinder a search that was being legally conducted?
Doesn't seem like it, no. It seems like the search had no legal basis, and so no legal search was hindered.
I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data and also create a semi plausible artificial profile to hide the deletion event.
This discussion was raised last time this story was discussed. I was among its advocates: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061890>.
Briefly: no.
Less briefly: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060780> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060716> (from the grapheneos HN account directly).
I think for the case we're talking about here, though, it would be doable. This doesn't need to thwart deep forensic analysis. It just needs to survive a border agent thumbing through the contents of your phone for a bit. If the fake profile data looks plausible, and doesn't raise any flags, the agent gives the phone back and you're on your way.
Hell, I think a setup that doesn't wipe anything, but just drops you into a sanitized, isolated profile for the border agent to look at, would be fine for many users. Certainly you wouldn't want to use this in truly high-stakes situations where it's likely that your device will be confiscated no matter what, and analyzed to death, but for the simple "border agent wants to snoop on my data for a few seconds" case, it's likely sufficient.
(As always, risk analysis can be hard, humans are often bad at it, and not everyone's threat model is the same.)
Thanks for sharing - I get the concerns people have raised in those threads, however I still feel something in this space could be useful.
Even a duress PIN which triggers predefined deletion of certain folders, messages and apps could reduce law enforcement exposure significantly.
Deleting arbitrary directories, messages and app data would be highly unreliable. There's a high likelihood of the data being recovered. It's not how computer filesystems and storage are designed to work. Reliable deletion of data requires setting it up to be reliably deleted later on by having it encrypted on storage with keys which can be reliably prevented from ever being obtained again.
Wiping the overall data on the device via a factory reset, OS recovery mode or duress PIN/password prevents recovering any of the data because it reliably wipes material needed to derive key encryption keys and also reliably wipes the encrypted disk encryption keys. Wiping the encrypted disk encryption keys alone would not be good enough because they're stored on the SSD so imaging the SSD and restoring it could preserve the ability to recover the data. The way the key material needed to derive the key encryption keys is wiped prevents recovery via imaging the SSD mainly due to the secure element.
There's already support for reliably wiping data at the granularity of Private Spaces and secondary users. Those have their own encryption keys and can be reliably deleted due to having their own Weaver slots in the secure element and other hardware-based security integration.
Apps can also assorted generate encryption keys in the secure element and use those to encrypt data where it can be reliably deleted via wiping the hardware keystore keys. That requires apps built to have granular storage and encryption of their data.
Despite it being possible to wipe a secondary user or Private Space reliably, the past existence of it and when it was wiped will be easily discoverable via the main Owner user and system data. Preventing discovery of those profiles having existed requires an overall wipe of the data. It isn't feasible to hide it without doing that and hiding it would involve a whole bunch of unreliable removal of data without a way to prevent recovery along with redoing a bunch of statistics and other metadata to hide that there was another profile until recently. For example, things like the battery and data usage stats directly refer to the profiles. Even hiding it from naive analysis not looking at the leftover data on storage would still require changing a bunch of things to hide it.
Making data deletion of the data reliable for a whole profile or the whole data partition also requires a reboot or shutdown. Consider how much data gets loaded into the page cache and many other forms of data in the Linux kernel and other processes. Consider how much linger around in various kinds of registers, etc. including outside of the OS itself. Reboot or shutdown has code to get rid of this and the device sitting there turned off or booting again also gets rid of it.
They were clearly going to hook his phone up to forensics software on a laptop and had done what they needed to do in order to justify it for their own policies. It would not make sense to set up everything they did simply to have someone non-technical manually sift through his apps. They have widespread access to forensic software and also more advanced software with exploits. They definitely have easy access to it at a major Atlanta airport. The adversary in this case is not a non-technical human but rather advanced software from Cellebrite who are fully aware of alternative operating systems and document information on it. Their documentation directly refers to GrapheneOS and has tables listing their (currently very limited) capabilities against it.
This story got widespread news coverage and is widely known about. That should help make it clear how important it is for features to work against adversaries aware of these kinds of features. Our duress PIN/password works against adversaries aware of it. If they don't coerce a PIN/password from someone or don't enter a coerced PIN/password because they know it could be in use then the feature has worked. We want to improve the feature with secure element rate limiting integration in the future so that an OS exploit cannot be used to bypass it. The secure element already prevents an OS exploit from bypassing the limit of 20 total attempts for deriving encryption keys with massively increasing delays between those attempts. It used to solely be based on delays with throttling quickly reaching 1 attempt per day after 140 failed attempts but now there are only 20 total unique attempts. The past 5 failed unique attempts are temporarily remembered and discarded when entered again rather than trying to use them again for usability.
> Reliable deletion of data requires setting it up to be reliably deleted later on
I mean - yes? If you design a subtle duress pin that only hides certain things, users would have to choose what.
I myself want the bank apps, password manager and email to disappear without a trace, but I don’t care about the social media, photos or web browser history. Other people, though, will have different priorities.
You misunderstood the parent post, it's extremely difficult to delete the data without leaving a trace that something was deleted.
I don’t agree. On an encrypted volume all space unallocated by the filesystem should have random data in it and should be indistinguishable from the portion representing in-use filesystem data. Deleting data securely involves overwriting all the previously allocated filesystem blocks with random data. No one should be able to discern that now-empty space had data in it as of some specific recent datetime.
There may be more OS design decisions you have to make to cleanly wipe all references to particular app or process names but to me it all seems doable.
> Deleting data securely involves overwriting all the previously allocated filesystem blocks with random data. No one should be able to discern that now-empty space had data in it as of some specific recent datetime.
If it was like a HDD maybe that could work, but most modern solid state storage doesn't work like that any more.
You can't reliably overwrite any data, because the default is to write any new data in an empty sector (sort of, it has to do with how flash storage works, because of "wear leveling"), which is managed at the hardware level of the storage itself, so you also can't really tell the OS to do something else.
To reliably delete a specific file or directory, it needs to be encrypted with a dedicated key which can be reliably deleted. It can have dedicated key material in the secure element used to derive sub-keys from the main encryption keys or it could simply be encrypted with another layer of encryption.
For the OS disk encryption, it uses separate randomly generated disk encryption keys for the main user, secondary users and Private Spaces which are different forms of profiles. Those keys are stored encrypted with key encryption keys derived from the per-profile lock method combined with various forms of key derivation material from elsewhere.
The most important of the key derivation material for profiles is the per-profile Weaver token on the secure element which it uses to enforce rate limiting for decryption attempts (max 20 attempts per profile with rapidly increasing delays) and to provide extremely reliable deletion of the data. Wiping the weaver slot for a profile prevents deriving the key encryption keys which prevents ever decrypting the randomly generated disk encryption keys again. The randomly generated disk encryption keys are only stored once and get wiped via a special SSD secure erase command but that isn't nearly as good as the secure element integration. If the SSD is imaged before a wipe and then restored, the data still isn't recoverable because the secure element wiped what's needed to decrypt the disk encryption keys.
Reliably deleting data is a much different thing from fully hiding that anything was deleted which is drastically more difficult and not compatible with how things are typically done. It's pretty much impossible to stealthily delete a secondary profile since there's too much system and Owner user data referencing them including the package manager's state, battery stats, data usage stats and far more. It's possible to attempt to go through all of that and hide it including forging the other stats to mask what was removed but data cannot be reliably deleted in a fine-grained way, especially on top of a modern copy-on-write or log structured filesystem combined with an SSD controller doing wear leveling.
An SSD controller will redirect writes to less written NAND than what is now being written to level out usage. That relies on it being aware of free storage to choose from that instead which is the purpose of TRIM. A modern SSD will also very proactively move around data rather than only redirecting writes to free space with less wear. It will identify the data that's rarely or never written and move it to the most written areas of the SSD to free up the space it was on for the most written data. Having 2TB of used space that's rarely ever touched, 1TB of a heavily written database and 1TB free will not only use the 2TB of active space for wear leveling with a modern SSD controller design. It will use the whole 4TB for it.
A modern copy-on-write or log structured filesystem doesn't write to the location where the data was originally but rather elsewhere. Android uses f2fs which is log structured which heavily helps with wear leveling at a higher level and also provides the ability to turn off data persistence temporarily and then roll back to the point it was turned back in an incredibly efficient way. Android uses that incredibly efficient rollback feature as part of A/B updates to preserve the ability to fully roll back an OS update which doesn't end up working properly until after it reaches the lockscreen successfully.
An app regularly appending data to a file, overwriting data in it or replacing the whole file is leaving data around all over the place. A decision can't simply be retroactively made to reliably delete the data for that file or the overall app. It would have had to be set up in a way that it can be reliably deleted. Without that, the whole secondary profile it's in is going to need to be deleted to reliably delete the data. If it's not in a secondary profile, the whole device needs to be wiped for it.
> I mean - yes? If you design a subtle duress pin that only hides certain things, users would have to choose what.
That's not what we were talking about. This is the full sentence we wrote:
"Reliable deletion of data requires setting it up to be reliably deleted later on by having it encrypted on storage with keys which can be reliably prevented from ever being obtained again."
What we're saying is that in order to have fine-grained deletion of data, it has to be encrypted with fine-grained keys with hardware support for deleting those keys reliably. Reliable deletion of data should also not be confused with stealthy deletion of data which is not generally possible for the kinds of data being discussed.
> I myself want the bank apps, password manager and email to disappear without a trace
You can put all of this into a Private Space or secondary user where it can be reliably deleted as a whole. There will be no way to recover any of the data if the profile is deleted. We have a planned feature for either a toggle to make the duress PIN/password only delete specific secondary profiles or more likely a 2nd duress PIN/password with that different purpose.
Deleting secondary profiles will reliably prevent recovering any of their data, at least after a reboot or shutdown. The best way to do it would be deleting them and then rebooting where the main user and secondary profiles not included in the deletion would still be there after the reboot. Without the reboot, it's unrealistic to reach the point where it's truly highly reliable. The OS does purge the keys for a secondary profile but a lot lingers around in system processes, page cache and elsewhere. If you delete a secondary profile with the goal of preventing data recovery then it's a good idea to reboot afterwards.
Dividing things up into secondary users is the way people can set up having fine-grained reliable deletion of the data. We can expand our duress PIN/password feature to support working with that.
It should be noted nothing about wiping secondary profiles is stealthy. It's very obvious there were profiles and that they were wiped. It can be determined when it happened and approximately how much data was deleted too. The data and filenames are unrecoverable but a fair bit of metadata on the sizes of files, etc. can be recoverable because that metadata is globally encrypted rather than per-profile encrypted. If you want to delete absolutely all traces of it in a reliable way, an overall wipe of the device does it extremely well. If you delete a profile then nothing encrypted by it can be recovered but what about all the evidence of it existing in the system and Owner user data? It's in the battery statistics, data usage statistics, package manager metadata and many other places. It can be purged from those but absence of data can be detected, and there's the usual problem of simply not being able to reliably delete data from computers in a fine-grained way. It's too late to reliably delete data from a file after the file has been regularly rewritten and modified.
Deletion needs to happen through deleting the keys used to encrypt all data which was ever stored in the file, so it would have had to be set up with that in advance. To reliably redact data in a file, the file would need a dedicated hardware-backed key with a new one being generated and the old one wiped as part of redacting data. Reliable wiping of a profile or the overall device works because it's all encrypted with filesystem-based full disk encryption using keys which can be reliably deleted. Profiles have fine-grained encryption for filenames and file data.
You cannot retroactively decide you want to reliably delete the data of a specific app and then do it. It's already spread all over the place. You'd need to wipe the whole profile or the whole device if it's not in a secondary profile. The OS would have had to set up a dedicated encryption key for that app's data with hardware support for deleting only that key by itself. Apps can do this and Signal is an example of app doing it which prevents backing it up via the OS backup system without also using their own backup system too.
Maybe it could cause the phone to "randomly" bootloop or something? "Oh no, my phone is broken again, last time this happened I needed to do a factory reset"
This case happened precisely because the officers noticed the phone flash and reboot when they entered the pin. IIRC they didn't make a fuss over it, but time later he got charged over the event.
So whatever a duress pin does, it has to be subtle enough that anyone looking doesn't link it to the act of entering the pin.
Private 0-day exploits?
Have a phone with crappy battery and have it trigger a high processor load to take the battery voltage drop and turn off the phone? (Eg what Apple tried to prevent with the batterygate thing).
> I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data
Reliably deleting data at the scale of the whole data partition, a secondary user or a Private Space is fully supported but requires a reboot or shutdown to truly complete it.
After wiping key derivation material needed to obtain the key encryption keys in multiple ways and wiping the encrypted disk encryption keys, the OS can still access the data. It still has data in the page cache, in registers and elsewhere. There are still a bunch of system processes with data tied to what was removed. The OS is still fully functional after the nearly instant wipe of everything needed to recover the data again. It can still access all data other than what's encrypted with hardware keystore keys and not currently decrypted.
The wiping process for the duress PIN/password is completed with a shutdown which tears down everything, zeroes memory and provides at least a small time window where the hardware is powered off too. A reboot would also work and the boot process has explicit zeroing of memory, registers, etc.
We decided to use shutdown for the duress PIN/pasword but a reboot is a valid approach too. Our locked device auto-reboot timer feature we first shipped in 2021 relies on the zeroing done by GrapheneOS for both the process of the OS tearing down and then again during booting to return the device to Before First Unlock state.
> also create a semi plausible artificial profile to hide the deletion event.
It isn't feasible to fool forensic software so it largely wouldn't work against state actors. It nearly certainly wouldn't have helped in this situation in the news. They aren't reliant on a non-technical person sifting through a phone. They'll just hook it up to a laptop and follow the data extraction procedure which involves enabling ADB. The software is aware of GrapheneOS can guide people through dealing with anything different about it. They've had a lot of trouble with extraction via ADB for GrapheneOS since the vulnerabilities they exploit via ADB keep getting patched or blocked it exploit protections but it isn't realistic to block extraction with them having the PIN/password. They could just enable the encrypted backup service in the OS instead and then use CLI tools to extract the data from there with the seed phrase. They don't do that because they want everything rather than only nearly all app data. They also have special code to deal with apps such as Signal with their own layer of data encryption since the data taken from their app data directory is nearly all useless by itself.
There's also quite a difference between wiping and rebooting into a not very plausible environment with decoy data set up by the user in advance compared to not properly wiping and giving access to a decoy profile. Bear in mind the OS can still access nearly all data after the wipe until a reboot. It could make a best effort attempt at purging as much as possible from memory, but the OS is not designed to continue functioning with all of the data disappearing. It can't just wipe all loaded encryption keys without crashing and rebooting anyway. It also has a ton of data still around in caches and elsewhere. We don't want to just do a best effort job cleaning up as much as we can but rather reliably prevent recovering any of the deleted data.
We could definitely add a duress PIN/password which wipes only specific secondary profiles, reboots and has the device still functional with whatever data was in the main user still there. That's a feature we can add, but it's important to note that it will not hide that there was deletion of data. It's easy to detect, and it's not feasible to hide that it happened. Many steps can be taken to make it less obvious, but it will still be easy for software aware of it to detect. Even a massive overhaul designed to perfect it would not address the SSD itself giving away what happened for more advanced analysis.
We aren't going to add a decoy profile compromising the security of the device and providing a way to recover data in a state where it isn't at all unrecoverable yet. We did already plan to consider a 2nd duress PIN/password which only wipes specific secondary profiles, but we need to make it clear that it cannot stealthily wipe them to users.
Just wanted to say I appreciate your comprehensive comments in this thread. Learned a lot.
Or put a dead man's switch on there
Interesting. So is this GrapheneOS indeed operationally good for keeping one‘s data private?
I mean, it sounds like it would be even better if the duress response was more subtle.
A duress code might let me wipe my phone when someone holds a gun to my head and demands I unlock it. Problem is, there’s still someone holding a gun to my head.
He had an e-reader and phone. My solution would be set the phone's duress pin to the e-reader's actual pin then consent to the e-reader search providing its pin and see what happens.
The actual solution is cloud backup + re-image after the border.
Yes if you don’t mind getting arrested by our fascist border police
I don’t think that would fly as a defense in court.
He’ll just have to pray the scene wasn’t recorded and his real PIN was one digit off
>I don’t think that would fly as a defense in court
but that's not the point, the point is to not wind up in court by presenting a phone that no long contains evidence but seems plausibly like your phone so doesn't arouse suspicion
> by presenting a phone that no long contains evidence
Evidence Tampering
https://xkcd.com/1494/
Yeah if they can catch you and prove it.
Even if they can’t prove it, they can make your life really miserable for quite a while.
If it was implemented in such a way, there would be no reason to suspect anyone of using it because it would be totally indistinguishable from not having used it. At that point they have no grounds for legal action. Unless they could monitor FS/disk activity, but that goes beyond typical airport security stuff.
I'm imagining a duress code that erases select files and any indication that there was ever a duress code set up in the first place.
As soon as that starts, authorities will charge people just for having GrapheneOS. There are 0 checks and balances right now, it's a free for all.
As things stand right now, software is 1-A protected speech. I'm not sure how long that will be the case with growing authoritarianism, specifically wrt to tech, on both sides of the aisle. I am concerned it may be considered probable cause though -- like how you can legally have an ax in the bed of your pickup but it's a free pass for a cop to search your vehicle if they're so inclined -- but really, they can manufacture probable cause for anyone if they want so it's kind of moot. You may be attracting unnecessary attention though if you've got "GrapheneOS" on your lock screen. But this goes back to my original point, they still have to catch you in the first place.
> As things stand right now, software is 1-A protected speech. I'm not sure how long that will be the case with growing authoritarianism
Setting aside the now-regular attacks by the state on traditional 1st amendment rights (demonstrating, journalism, criticizing the government):
Authoritarianism's disregard for the 1st amendment doesn't stop just because one potential legal technical interpretation maybe says they should.
(1) Keep manufacturer's Android plus some plausible apps and data in a reserved part of the drive. (2) GrapheneOS runs from the other part of the drive. (3) Make sure PIN screen designed to not give away the OS. (4) When duress PIN is entered, erase GrapheneOS and restore manufacturer's Android. (5) Now you won't be charged for having GrapheneOS because they won't know you had it.
No, to my knowledge, they ask you to enter your PIN/password yourself. They don't enter it for you. I believe he entered it himself, at which point the erasure began. The erasure process was witnessed by the officer.
From https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/activist-charged-wit...
> Tunick provided this code to an agent, who entered it on the phone, after which “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart.”
So the real problem in the end is that your duress system should not put a big message "erasing all data" but "loading" slowly and just look mostly empty.
You sir have nailed it. Unfortunately, GrapheneOS seems too stuck up to eagerly appreciate and address such real world nuances.
They don't add features that rely on security through obscurity, would give attackers tons of attack surface, is physically impossible to make actually deniable, and could put regular GrapheneOS users in physical danger in authoritarian regimes.
I am baffled that the number of comments trying to work around a problem that shouldn't exists is above zero. No, this crap shouldn't happen. It's an appalling situation that it is happening at all.
A bunch of tech guys not understanding that you can't fight fascism with technological workarounds.
I'm not a legal expert, but all this seems to check out with US law. Americans need to remember that some of their constitutional rights don't really apply at ports of entry by design. This inconvenient truth for the land of the free has existed for a long time, this situation is just drawing attention to it. Their powers are far-reaching.
Fun fact, there is a long standing exemption to the unreasonable search and seizure protection laws if you're out on a boat (it may only be on the open ocean and Great Lakes, though IANAL). One of the earliest Supreme Court rulings essentially said that without it, it would be impossible for the US to enforce tariffs, which were the main source of revenue at the time. Anybody who boats often enough has been boarded by the coast guard for various safety checks that allows them to poke around and there's little you can do about it.
Any “navigable waters” fall under this jurisdiction which at a minimum includes all salt water and the Great Lakes, plus a few other odds and ends rivers and so forth. Indeed, almost all state and landside federal law goes out the window on a boat - a frequently bumped into example by boaters here in Washington is getting a civil penalty flavored reminder from USCG that cannabis is still (for whatever reasons) federally an illegal substance, and having it on a boat at all is an offense (with larger amounts or future violations escalating as far as seizure of the vessel).
Marine laws are nuts.
Furthermore, "the law" in this area is currently different in different Federal circuit court jurisdictions...
The US / common law jurisdictions typically only have very light self-incrimination protections. The 5th amendment in the US only protects against self-incriminating testimonial. That's it.
In most other jurisdictions (i.e. civil law) it's perfectly legal for the accused to destroy evidence (assuming you're not committing any other crimes in doing so, like breaking and entering, property crime etc.), seizure being ordered or not, while it remains illegal to destroy evidence at the behest of someone else. I.e. civil law usually doesn't criminalize self-protective conduct. That's true even in e.g. Japan.
That's interesting. Where can I read more about this?
Non-US-centric legal topics are surprisingly often a blind spot in enwiki, this is one of them. In civil law the core principle for this is "nemo tenetur (se ipsum accusare)", but the reifications are wildly different in the jurisdictions. Here are some examples:
- Japan (South Korea has practically the same law word-for-word): https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3581/e... ("...relating to a criminal case of another person" i.e. this is not applicable if you do it in your own case). Likewise article 103, harboring is not illegal if you're related.
- Germany: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st... (this also includes harboring and makes it not illegal for family, which is a typical provision in civilized law)
- The usual suspects, Italy, Poland, Austria (of course), Switzerland, ... even the Russian criminal code has pretty much the same provisions
- Also the usual suspects: France ("guilletoine them all") and UK (common law) do not have this
Curiously, China quite closely matches the US.
This is essentially one aspect of Hobbesian self-preservation, I don't believe enwiki even mentions this idea anywhere. Another aspect of self-preservation is that -obviously- the mere act of escaping from prison or evading arrest can't be a criminal offense, and to varying degrees civil law jurisdictions recognize that.
Huh. The Spanish Wikipedia doesn't mention it either, just has a brief blurb somewhere defining the Latin phrase.
I am surprised how little Jacob Applebaum's experience border crossing in 2010 is mentioned in relation to this story, because it is relevant.
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/researcher-detained-at-u-s...
While so many people try to come up with technical solutions for legal concerns, the method Jacob used was pragmatic.
You cannot be compelled to turn over what you do not have
If you're concerned about your digital devices while crossing borders, do not forget a viable option is to simply not have a digital device with you when you cross.
Put simply, do not limit your imagination to purely technical means.
Of course, there may be means to compel you to retrieve that data, but typically at border crossings your primary threat surface is physical possession.
Next: felony charging people who travel without phone (because they are afraid of US border controls in general), because that looks suspicious.
So the part of this that feels like it triggers the government issue here is that in effect you have a locally stored encryption key which gates access to the device, which was removed from the device due to duress password.
What if we flipped this to instead be something that's explicitly not on the device?
The border search stuff only applies to information on the device. It cannot compel you to provide access to e.g. emails stored in a cloud provider.
If instead of making the process of stopping searches like this be a destructive one, we instead pre-purge the key but store it offsite with the ability to get it from an online location, then this feels like it's probably reasonable here. In the sense that the 4th amendment explicitly allows "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, ..."
There's probably some sort of technical problem I'm missing here (or maybe this functionality is available already).
Yeah, so caveat emptor: the legal system isn't something you can hack like a computer...
But...
The issue at hand is the "locality" of the encryption header. He merely facilitated its deletion, not the data.
If he had a backup at home, is that still a felony?
What about if he had a backup on a flash drive with him?
What if he never had the header on the phone to begin with and used a detached header on a flash drive?
Are detached headers (a thing you can easily do with LUKS) now de-facto illegal?
This whole thing is making me feel rather uneasy about the bigger picture.
See https://www.cbp.gov/document/directives/cbp-directive-no-334...
> The border search will include an examination of only the information that is resident upon the device and accessible through the device's operating system or through other software, tools, or applications. Officers may not intentionally use the device to access information that is solely stored remotely. To avoid retrieving or accessing information stored remotely and not otherwise present on the device, officers will either request that the traveler disable connectivity to any network ( e.g., by placing the device in airplane mode and disabling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections) or where warranted by national security, law enforcement, officer safety, or other operational considerations, officers will themselves disable network connectivity. Officers should also take care to ensure, throughout the course of a border search, that they do not take actions that would make any changes to the contents of the device.
and
> Passcodes or other means of access obtained during a border inspection will only be utilized to facilitate the inspection of devices and information subject to border search. Passcodes or other means of access may not be utilized to access information that is only stored remotely. Passcodes or other means of access should only be recorded by the officer in a temporary format and should not be uploaded into CBP systems. Passcodes or other means of access recorded by the officer will be deleted or destroyed when no longer needed to facilitate the search of a given device.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say
The existence of a key only being somewhere other than your current location during a border search enables you to legally say "I cannot unlock this device" and move on with your day.
Well even today this guy could have just said 'I will not unlock this device' and they can seize it for some time, but they can't deny you entry. Which is pretty much the same scenario you created except the guy literally can't unlock it (but that doesn't actually matter here, he never _had_ to unlock it).
Could he? To answer properly without possibly committing further possible crimes, he needed a lawyer familiar with whether that's allowable, something he was explicitly denied after asking multiple times. See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71998357/21/united-stat...
> or maybe this functionality is available already
Basically already exists depending on specific trade offs and risk profile.
You already can encrypt your data and store the encryption key offsite. But then you couldn’t use your phone during travel, if you toss the key locally.
You can encrypt the data at rest and leave the decryption key in RAM and just turn off your phone. But they can still take the phone and copy the encrypted data, if they think they’ll get the key later.
My understanding is that this individual would t want the government to access the encrypted data either.
I'm talking specifically about the graphene OS ability for that approach, not the ability to add an external key to some generalized encryption. The threat model here is that the traveler was required to provide a passcode unlocking a key they had with them on their phone. If that threat is not there, then this bypasses problem.
If you initiate a wipe before approaching immigration, which swaps the whole phone contents to an encrypted backup that you physically can't decrypt without a key that (say) a friend knows. Then you would be offering immigration the device in an unaltered state between when they request it and when they receive it. Any request for an alternative pass code or whether the pass code given will alter the state of the device can be honestly answered.
I am curious if this is still obstruction - you still defeated their intent. If the law is just about intent, you can never defeat it.
This case has a very specific legal framing to it, but border agents don't actually need anything more than suspicion to keep you locked for a day or two.
Then it could last a lot longer. Technically they don't have the right to do that, but you won't have any physical mean to enforce your rights, and suing afterwards won't lead you anywhere in the current climate.
We'e had a few of these stories in HN before.
" If the law is just about intent, you can never defeat it."
Yeah I think that's what people are missing. Intent is almost sufficient. Note that the officers efforts to examine your device would actually be frustrated by what you and others are proposing. So you are not just intending to obstruct but successfully doing so.
How is this legally different from just not unlocking your phone? Which in this scenario seems like it'd be fine.
The worst case of refusing to unlock your phone is that they keep your phone for some days/weeks/months while they investigate.
I don't get the legal contradiction.
The search is supposed to be lawful without a warrant because you're not really in the US yet per-se, hence if you're not there, how deleting the data can be a felony?
I think you legally are in the US while at an American border crossing - at least if the crossing is on US land, which it was in this case. It might be more complicated for preclearance spots. It's just that normal rights are suspended there despite being in the US, even for citizens. Make of that what you will.
Your rights are not suspended, but border agents don’t need a reason to investigate you
And if you are a citizen, they can’t deny you entry. They can make it take a while, but you will be admitted.
...and then they start violating all your rights after starting the investigation lol. its just wordplay.
The Constitution makes no exemption for a suspension of rights at the border.
The Supreme court disagrees with you.
Have you read https://yalelawjournal.org/forum/customs-immigration-and-rig... ? Quoting from its abstract:
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted. The government’s recent use of the exception goes substantially beyond these matters.
None of these two interests apply to his targeted search. No duty applies here. By definition, no contraband can exist on an erased phone.
The supreme court is made of fallible humans
The Supreme Court often disagrees with itself.
The alleged crime is knowingly interfering with a lawful search (by providing a duress password that deleted the phone). Location has nothing to do with it.
The location is the crux of the "lawful" part of the search.
Are you a lawyer? I’m not, but the Legal Eagle video linked elsewhere in this thread says that the reasons for the search are the crux of the “lawful” part, not the location.
(The location was at the port of entry—the border—which is pretty much the definition of the CBP’s jurisdiction.)
That is a most interesting and underrated point.
It's a fairly shallow point that ignores how laws work.
The premise that the law doesn't apply because you're not in the country is false. The constitution applies generally everywhere to all Americans, it's just that what's regarded as reasonable differs during a border search. IANAL, so just my lay opinion on this. Just to validate this, it's only because the constitution exists that the border authorities have any legal basis in doing inspections.
Huh, that is inconsistent. The problem with your comment is noted right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390318
Not really - the government have stated that he's in the US. It's the first sentence of the indictment. [1]
> On or about January 24, 2025, in the Northern District of Georgia...
[1]: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.35...
But in general, the thing to note here is that the 4th amendment is always applicable and in force. It's how it's interpreted that changes depending on the circumstance.
It doesn’t matter where he was when he deleted the data. He could be in China, it’s still a crime in the us to destroy evidence wanted by American authorities.
You're speaking nonsense since there was no charge or warrant against him. People are free to use their phone for f sake.
Evidence exists independent of a charge or warrant. The instant they asked for access to the phone, it became evidence. If he had entered the duress code himself before walking up to the agent, he'd be fine. Nerds thinking that technicalities is how the law works is why he's in hot water.
Law enforcement doesn’t need a warrant to search phones at the border. I agree this is a terrible rule but it is the rule right now.
Is that the 100 mile wide border?
Have you read https://yalelawjournal.org/forum/customs-immigration-and-rig... ? Quoting from its abstract:
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted. The government’s recent use of the exception goes substantially beyond these matters.
None of these two interests apply to his targeted search. No duty applies here. By definition, no contraband can exist on an erased phone
You have lost track of the chain of discussion.
right, there's a contradiction here:
- if you're deemed to be on US soil, constitutional protections (4A) apply; can't be destroying "evidence" unless you're accused of a crime or found to have committed a crime
- if you're deemed _not_ yet on US soil, then how can you be charged with a crime under _US_ law?
The US views that US law applies worldwide. There is no requirement that you be anywhere near the US to be under US jurisdiction for an alleged offense against the US, according to the US.
Also, that constitutional protections are suspended within 100 miles of a land, sea, or air border.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, since your statement is true:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS22497
Although obviously not all US laws apply and enforcement is a whole other kettle of fish.
where's that in the Constitution?
4A still doesn't permit you to destroy the evidence. Resist on 4A grounds, destroy the evidence, 4A reasons get overturned - you've got yourself a conviction. US v. Akram Musleh.
in practice you're right, but it's hard to see how that squares with the 4A.
an officer can't stop me on the street and demand to see the contents of my phone -- unless they can show "probable cause" that I was about to commit a crime (based on other evidence), or I'm already named as a suspect or POI in an investigation. So if they ask to see the contents of my phone and I delete it instead (it's a very small bag in this example, Lol) am I obstructing an investigation?
> am I obstructing an investigation
If the investigation was legit, then yes. You should just say no. If you give the phone over to them or delete data on it after they ask to see it, you are destroying evidence. Does not matter whether you are the target of the investigation or not, they think you have evidence, you deleted it.
Just say no to the police and then keep your trap shut. This is especially true for federal agents.
"[...] Since 1953, the US Department of Justice has defined the border to be anywhere within 100 miles of the actual national limits.[...] According to the American Civil Liberties Union, about two-thirds of the people in the US live within 100 miles of a border. So in theory these 200 million border zone dwellers could have their phones seized and searched at any time by CBP agents without a warrant.[...]"
From the register (2023)
https://www.theregister.com/security/2023/06/01/us-court-fin...
Iirc this does not allow for warrantless home searches, so they can’t just waltz into your house and demand your phone. 100 miles is still wild tho.
Maybe there could be some hack to create more borders within the United States, so that perhaps 90% of the population could live within 100 miles of the border. For example, declaring the middle of some lakes to be non-territorial waters?
Could be another one of those fun exercises in legal hacking to build tyranny that people in the US seem to be so fond of.
If I have a device that wipes user data every 6 hours if the pin is not entered, and then I am investigated and refuse to speak the pin since I can’t be compelled, and so the 6 hours pass and the device wipes itself, what is that considered?
Whatever they want to charge you with.
https://archive.is/SflVC
Thanks. Really wish this was higher.
I always enter US with all of my devices wiped and restore them from backup once I'm past immigration, simply because I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires.
Now I'm worried that this will be held against me..
> I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires
What does the security officer at your company say?
Either you shouldn't be leaving with devices with the data from your job on them, or you don't trust them, but your job is fine with it.
I keep work things separate. If it's a personal trip, I don't travel with work devices. If it's a work trip, and there's worry, I usually take a loaner device usually with ms office and a vpn.
Usually the issue is not returning, but other governments.
This is absolutely a possibility and having a clean phone might be grounds for being denied entry.
The border agent has a lot of control over your life at that point and virtually zero accountability.
It's not the same issue. From the article,
> After questioning, he eventually turned it over but gave officers a passcode that then erased the contents of his Google Pixel phone.
I don't see the problem being a clean device, but destroying evidence in the moment.
I replied specifically to the comment mentioning that arriving with pre-wiped devices could be used against them.
It's like those notices "by clicking accept below you agree to giving up your data", by purchasing a ticket to visit US all your data are belong to the US.
Wouldn't they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was data on the phone that was wiped? Even the article says that only the data on the device at the time of the search is in-scope. Wouldn't you have to prove that there was something in-scope to search for it to be a lawful search?
Seems like it would be better to have a truecrypt type of situation, where if you put in a certain pin, then it just logs you into a separate OS with nothing you want to hide.
Obviously have the duress pin if what’s in your phone is worse than the obstruction charges too.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389273>
In the truecrypt scenario you’d be using the hidden and encrypted volume only for what you explicitly want to keep hidden and use the other one for your daily life.
So in the article situation, the guy is a protestor and presumably suspects he’s going to be targeted by the police for it. He’d keep that stuff isolated from his usual activity. There’d be no need to generate convincing fake activity.
Certainly more of a hassle than having a PIN that can destroy everything.
For a much better-informed source than me, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49392816>. (GrapheneOS HN account.)
Burner phone / clean phone for border crossings seems the more accessible option.
As others have noted, this is standard policy amongst many organisations, some on account of US policies and practices, some on account of other states.
I'd say better would be not trying to pull a fast one on the cops. Rather than trying to sneak past them and local innocuous, just exercise your right to say no.
> Obviously have the duress pin if what’s in your phone is worse than the obstruction charges too.
I would say that if what you have on your phone is worse than a destruction of evidence conviction then you may want to just wipe the phone before you get anywhere near a cop. Playing stupid games with cops most often leads to winning stupid prizes. Keep the interaction simple. "No."
And this is why companies in the EU have a business travel rule to take a freshly wiped laptop on international trips, not just a locked one with a "distress code".
I hope some day border agents ask for my phone, because I have not used one or even had a cell phone plan in over 5 years. Checkmate, assholes.
Do you still have a phone number(you can use something like jmp.chat on desktop)? If not, how do you navigate services like banks or utilities that demand one?
Ported my old cell phone number to voip so I can access it from a laptop without a cell network.
That’s quite a feat
As if i needed another reason to avoid traveling to the US.
See ya when the political climate changes... maybe.
Amendment 4:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Amendment 5:
"..nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
But the bar for hauling someone to court and defacto punishing them financially and smearing them in the eyes of the public is so low. And the path to getting compensation for wrongful prosecution so fraught. What an easy tool the justice system is to punish uppity citizens thinking they don't have a king.
You think they'll see a courtroom? Ha! If they're lucky they'll get there in 5yr and $15k.
When the administrative enforcement bureaucracies want to harass you they'll hit you with some ruinously expensive civil fine BS. No court will give a crap about you until you've exhausted a bunch of appeals, which you of course appeal to the same agency that's trying to screw you. Only after years of that (and invariably legal fees, because you can't go it alone), do you sue them and get to see a real courtroom. But even then, this is a civil matter, not a criminal one, so all your rights have been nerf'd and there's a hundred years of precedent and case law that tilt things in their favor. If you get lucky, they'll settle and you'll only be out a few tens of thousands for the ordeal.
>Amendment 4:
He was charged for destroying evidence, not refusing a search
>Amendment 5:
Destroying evidence isn't testimony. Moreover he would have been in the clear if he just kept his mouth shut.
> He was charged for destroying evidence, not refusing a search
Evidence with regard to which investigation?
Border agents are entitled to investigate anything for any reason more or less
If you are a US citizen, they are not entitled to your unlocked phone. They need a judicial warrant if they want you to unlock your phone with a PIN/password. It is settled case law that that falls under your protections under the 14th Amendment.
They can take it for a "reasonable amount of time" (inconvenience you for a few hours and make you miss your connecting flight) while they copy an encrypted image. They then must return it to you.
I'm not sure this is 100% true. Courts have found that in order for the exception to the 4th amendment at borders to apply the search has to bear some relationship to the purpose of securing borders. For example
"to conduct such an intrusive and nonroutine search under the border search exception (that is, without a warrant), the Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception’s purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband. See also United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 620 (1977) (“The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.”). If a nonroutine search becomes too “attenuated” from these historic rationales, it “no longer [will] fall under” the exception"
-- US v. RAYMOND IDEMUDIA AIGBEKAEN (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca4/17...)
Of course whether border agents know or care about this is a different story and by the time you are quoting precedent, you're probably beyond any of this being helpful.
But did they? Was there an actual investigation going on?
It seems like the best course of action would be to argue he did not destroy evidence, just made it unavailable at the location to force the requirement for a search warrant. It would probably be a hard sell, but I can't think of a better argument (not a lawyer).
> Moreover he would have been in the clear if he just kept his mouth shut.
Although then you get a possible delay of undefined duration, additional questioning and seizure of your device.
What's the longest a citizen (with all appopriate documentation on them) has been held by border patrol after refusing to answer any questions? A quick search failed to get me a solid answer to this, other than a general suggestion that 72 hours is probably the practical upper limit (but no statutory limit necessarily exists), and CBP policies say 12 hours.
I'm interested to know about specific examples. Aside from extraordinary cases where the gov't is pretty sure they're dealing with a bona fide terrorist, my expectation is that CBP mostly isn't really that interested in detaining people indefinitely just for the lulz. They're probably just going to say "okay, fine, we're taking the phone, here's your receipt for it, get lost" and let you go on your way.
Problem is, he didn't destroy shit. "He" (by which I mean, technically the agents) deleted a header that's used to encrypt data but can restored from a backup.
This is why we have judges, I wonder if this has been ruled on already. If you filled out a notebook in a special cipher with the cipher stored separately beside it, then when a cop asked for the notebook you handed the cipher over and then burned the cipher right in front of them, is that destruction of evidence? Idk at the end of the day it does have the same result as destroying the data.
>"He" (by which I mean, technically the agents)
Under the same logic you could mail a bomb to anyone and say you didn't kill anyone, they did. It was just rigged to blow when they opened the box.
Deleting isn’t destroying?
Sure, but the issue is he didn't delete his data, he deleted a header with a key in it, that's it, just a few MB. He didn't delete hundreds of GB of chats or browsing history, he deleted a key to access it and that key isn't necessarily the only one that can access it. All the stuff they want can still be accessed just fine if another copy of the key exists.
To put it in protective, just opening a web browser or some other app can delete/alter more data than was deleted in this case.
These neener neener games don't work in reality. Courts aren't autistic computer systems.
That’s semantics. For all intents and purposes he destroyed it, no different than if he stomped on the phone or deleted all the files traditionally.
I don’t think a judge would care about splitting that hair.
Kind of? Let's say he has a detached header on another device and deleted the one on his phone. It's not at all destroyed now. Is what he did still illegal?
This is important because this is a feature of some crypto systems like LUKS. You can have your header on another physically septate device. If this is ruled on in an insufficiently nuanced way it could have very significant implications for carrying encrypted data without the key.
I think I misunderstood your original scenario. This one makes a lot more sense. Although I wouldn't want to be in the position of being the test case.
I dunno, now that you phrased it this way I feel like it does matter.
Image he took a blow-torch to a safe and the door welded shut. The contents are still there but the door is broken.
> Image he took a blow-torch to a safe and the door welded shut
This analogue isn't perfect, but it isn't relevant anyway: the laws in question criminalize acts based on their intent.
The blowtorch wasn't intended to destroy the contents of the safe (a la deletion of a key), but even still: if the intent was to impede or delay the investigation by welding the safe shut, it would be equally criminal.
I severely doubt that judges will be impressed with this reasoning.
Evidence of what? Destroying evidence assumes he is guilty of a crime which there be evidence of. Our system is predicated on an assumption of innocence. The normal threshold to accuse is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion." This does not meet that criteria.
Well that's the thing with destroying evidence. If you destroyed it, it becomes harder (or impossible) to prove you did the crime. That's why it's not uncommon for people to be only charged with stuff like "obstruction of justice" rather than the actual crime they allegedly did.
But you can't assume someone committed a crime.
The evidence on your phone may be against someone else, not you. Still evidence.
In this case, the authorities are claiming they were looking for CSAM. So wiping the phone hindered a valid investigation.
They can say anything they want. They hold all the power. This will never change until enough people take matters into their own hands, as the system has been compromised.
They think a well known protester who was savvy enough to wipe their phone was crossing the border with CSAM on their phone? Do people buy this shit?
And what if he was erasing a steamy affair with a border patrol agent? That's not illegal, but releasing knowledge of it could be damaging to all parties for no reason.
if the only evidence of a crime is on your phone, what kind of crime is it?
we should always be asking: is this the only way you can prove the accusation? just because it would make LEO life easier - that's not justification for violating the constitution.
an consider what this case teaches us: clean up your devices before you cross a border. how does that even help the goal of law enforcement?
Destroying evidence or items believed to be evidence is a crime in itself, regardless of whether or not the original "evidence" or lack thereof pertains to a crime.
> Our system is predicated on an assumption of innocence.
In theory. In practice, this is a hopelessly outdated supposition.
> Destroying evidence assumes he is guilty of a crime which there be evidence of.
This is 100% untrue. You can be guilty of destroying evidence that includes no criminal activity whatsoever.
"Evidence" of what, exactly? What specific crime did they expect to find evidence of on his phone?
They were pretty obviously hoping to find a specific crime to accuse him of (because he is a protester against the Atlanta "Cop City" thing).
But no respectable judge would ever have issued a search warrant on the basis of "we want to rifle through his messages/contacts so we can hopefully accuse him of something".
Protesters against this exact same thing were mis-prosecuted under "domestic terrorism" and "racketeering" charges before (got dismissed in 2025).
I'm just guessing here, but the most problematic word on the 4th amendment to attack from the government's perspective is "unreasonable". It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable, and (without digging into this deeply) I suspect that's where most of the push back on this will be.
I suspect the 5th amendment is probably more valuable to the defense here as the password is effectively testimonial and the give us your password or we'll ... is compelled speech.
Either way, it's gonna be many 10s of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees to fight this. Which sucks.
You should check out the LegalEagle video on the case. Covers all these interesting questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU
> It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable
I'm curious, is there any case law from the pre digital age regarding people forced to open their briefcase and let the border guard read all their documents at a port of entry?
you don't have those protections at the border: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
There is no such exception allowed in the Constitution. And if a case is made that they're not legally in the US yet, then by the same logic, they should not be subject to all the same laws of the US yet.
The Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. In United States v. Flores-Montano, the Court looked to the nation’s sovereign “interest in protecting . . . its territorial integrity” to justify such searches.3 In United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, the Court stated, somewhat more narrowly, that Congress is the source of the executive’s power. It explained that “[s]ince the founding of our Republic . . . [Congress has] granted the Executive plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border, without probable cause or a warrant.” The Commerce Clause permits Congress to authorize the seizure of goods at the border.
https://yalelawjournal.org/forum/customs-immigration-and-rig...
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted.
The only reasons allowed for border searches are ensuring that individuals are legally admitted (inapplicable here because citizens are always legally entitled to enter) and preventing contraband from entering.
A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search. It's not destroying evidence anymore than throwing away a water bottle before going through TSA is destroying evidence.
> A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search.
While this is the most compelling argument I've seen surrounding this case and this specific context, the initial attempt to enter with the contraband is likely a crime on its own - partial entry has already happened, the acts in question happened on US soil.
Imagine applying the same concept to drugs (and "body is a container" was found unconstitutional long ago, so no need to opine there) - if you're subject to a search and you eat drugs, does that somehow absolve you of the original attempt to smuggle?
> A wiped phone can't contain contraband
There is no requirement that evidence is "contraband".
As other comments have said, the courts aren't autistic. They don't fall for filly semantic games.
this is a nonsense statement. yes, unfortunately format logic is wholly inadequate to express what we need in the creation and application of laws. so yes, fuzzy issues about the intent of the law and the intent of the accused some into play, along with a healthy schmear of cultural norms.
but to say that the laws and precedence aren't largely concerned with building some semantic context, and that lawyers don't build chains of reasoning in that framework to prophet their positions is absolute nonsense.
you're positing a world where a judge just rules entirely on feels, and I think most judges would be quite offended by that notion.
I see a vast gulf between searching a truck of produce driven by a non-citizen vs intercepting a citizen at the boarder with known affiliations with the opposing political party.
And it's impossible to ignore that context. This is plainly wrong. And people trying to justify this plainly fascist search is sickening.
Even Wikipedia spells out that invasive searches require "reasonable suspicion." So we return to the core question... suspicion of what? Suspicion is not a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
"The government is allowed to use scanning devices and to search personal electronics. Invasive bodily searches, however, require reasonable suspicion." is what the article says
The original text is basically useless. They're more like a mission statement rather than directives. They set up broad aspirations, but the implementation has to be aggregated over literally millions of pages of judicial decisions.
Even lawyers with extremely different ideologies will give you convergent answers in a lot of cases, even when those answers conflict with an apparently obvious reading of the original text. Explaining that would require drilling down into details of thousands of court cases -- like reading a complex proof of a seemingly simple theorem.
I don't like that any more than you do. It's not mathematics, and even when given all the details, I usually find their inferences laughably bad -- even when I agree with the conclusion. It's not "logic" as I apply it as a logician, philosopher, or software developer. Lawyers (people on my side ideologically) will insist on the soundness of reasoning for decisions that they don't like but accept as valid.
So I don't find quoting the Constitution to be of any utility. None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.
> None of those words what you think they mean.
And that alone is already a pretty scandalous problem. If the law is not stated in a way that ordinary people can understand, how the hell are they supposed to obey it? Those who cannot afford the highly paid law explainers are basically locked out of society.
I don't think you're entirely wrong, but the Constitution binds the government, not citizens. The government can damn well afford to know what the 4th and 5th Amendments mean.
The words are actually extremely clear and its exceptionally prudent to quote them, because nobody with a brain can read them and fail see that the government is simply being unconstitutional - all over the place. Even when the people are powerless, we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth. Your post and this whole idea that "the words dont mean what they say they mean" is frankly doublespeak of the lowest form.
I just bought a cheap 1984 to masochistically read again.
> we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth
The truth is that the constitution is interpreted by humans in a common law context, and enforced by the apparatus of state, which has the means to impose its will. Calling this doublespeak is weird.
When its "interpreted" in a way that directly contradicts the words themselves then its not an interpretation, its a smokescreen to try and cover up the fact people in power dont want to follow the constitution and are not planning on doing so.
> None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.
The Constitution is written in plain English. And for the most part, Supreme Court decisions are written in plain English that any reasonably literate US citizen can understand. Yes, the law has technicalities and terms of art just like any other profession.
But one of the most damaging mentalities in modern times is the idea that the common man is incapable of understanding the law at even a basic level. This is flat-out not the case. Which leads to the follow-on problem: people who think lawyers have the ability to cast magic mumbo-jumbo spells that "get their clients off on a technicality" somehow. The best quote I ever heard about that from an attorney was "any time someone says a person 'got off on a technicality,' you can pretty much just safely replace that in your head with 'had their constitutional rights egregiously violated.'"
Yes, there are problems. Qualified immunity is a problem. Prosecutorial misconduct can be a problem. Abuse of discretion at the border is a problem. But that's different from doomerism about the entire justice system to the degree Very Online people express it.
Plain language interpretation of constitution is at odds with plain language interpretation of suprem court decisions.
And practical implementation of it all, the rights that you can actual force to have are the third thing.
How did it end up, because it’s not a new thing to happen. First time I read about this guy’s border crossing case was few months ago and was of course very much highlighted for the level of surveillance govs can do.. but I also read some Time later that by the letter of law he was not proven wrongdoing.
Are we still discussing a border crossing case that is long historic or there is still an active drama for this guy going on?
the lesson I take from this whole saga reinforces my convictions and what I was already working working towards: tie data to physical locations, where we still have rights. Self-host everything at home. Portable devices should always have the bare minimum data needed for the time until back home, and not even a way to connect to the data at home from a portable device outside home. You want my data? get a warrant for searching my home, and it's there waiting for you
At some point....the government is just the mafia with PR....and more cronies to protect them....witting or unwitting....
Law....is just license and permit....not security or safety or anything related to quality, or outcome....
It is purely process....and those who wield it can choose to apply it or withhold it....when the law is applied...then the imaginary world it defines is then enforced on the real world...materially this requires force or volition.... but lbr....its mostly convoluted propaganda and inertial power....and the law keeps that status quo...
If you are in anyway going to disrupt the power brokers....they will not let you....regardless of law or not
Does anyone know if this border security inspection is a goon scrolling through your photos, or do they just copy the whole memory of your phone to a real “threat detector”.
When I used to work in cell phones and I was debugging them, when they crash I would analyze the OS core dump for things like repeated phone numbers or emails etc. Basically any thing that signifies a memory leak. But that core dump would be the entire phone’s RAM and storage.
Border guards have always been of questionable value: they inspect your TN-1 and made somewhat arbitrary decisions on your documentation. You’d go one week and they’d send you to secondary but another they’d glance at the docs and just wave you through.
There's a company called Cellebrite that makes phone dumpers. They take full snapshots. All phones except GrapheneOS are vulnerable if the phone has been unlocked after it was rebooted (After First Unlock - disks have been decrypted). Some are also vulnerable Before First Unlock. So just assume if they have your phone and it's not Graphene, they get a full memory and disk dump.
There are different levels of "search" and the law (as interpreted by the courts) is not currently fully settled. The LegalEagle YouTube video on this case is excellent, as always:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU
Legally speaking, if he had written the code down somewhere and they had entered it, he would not be facing charges. He knowingly gave them a “delete all the evidence” command, as he explained to the newspaper. He could not have been compelled to provide the decryption code.
Isn't it just exercise of his right on his property? Since when did the data on someone's phone has become a shared property?
Next GrapheneOS feature: Travel mode, disable unlock until clear of ‘the US border’
The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding. It doesn't matter whether you're right, it doesn't matter whether it's the law, it's irrelevant that you have rights, etc. Those things are of the past now, for the US.
I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
The social dynamics are the same - the abuses, the selective enforcement, the lack of recourse, the same characters in the roles of various levels of "law enforcement" and "politics". I'm so very sorry, but the best you can do from here is speedrun the collapse.
With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing.
> I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
It's a very insidious, first you look all over your neighborhood flock cameras Hundreds of them came out of nowhere Nobody fought back .
it's as long as you're not doing anything wrong you don't have to worry about it Then once changed the definition of what wrong means.
If you're not a criminal you don't have to worry about it That's for your safety Then they changed the definition of what a crime is
This differentiates the US from who, exactly? If anything, US a latecomer to the public surveillance game.
>This differentiates the US from who, exactly?
What-aboutism is not a very compelling argument.
It kinda is? If people think the US is a Nazi hellhole, while holding up Europe as a model society, it should matter what those counties do.
Maybe true if the discussion was an explicit comparison between the U.S. and modern Europe.
As it is, no one was discussing Europe, let alone holding it up as a model society.
you are correct, nobody was discussing the implications if their extreme logic were equally applied elsewhere.
The former U.S. that was once the freest place on earth.
The US being the 'free-st' place on earth at anytime is quite the misnomer. Sure, you can be 'free' if you are white, wealthy, oh and land owning. Tale as old as time. Sure, you can protest, but many many other countries have far surpassed the US on that one, and have been doing it a whole lot longer.
Hold your horses, segregation was abolished in 1954, not sure US has ever been close from "the freest place on earth".
For the freest place on earth we are super high up on the list of incarcerated per capita.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
As a successful nonwhite person in the US, AbsurdCensor made an infantilizing comment. Non white people have flocked here in droves because of the freedom afforded to anyone to become wealthy. I agree that we are back sliding (tax burden, regulatory burden, political repression, etc.) but it is absurd to make it about race and say that it wasn't once the freest place to start a business and even express yourself.
Freedom to become wealthy was never true. It was the dream they sold you to get you to flock there.
It never was. The US is under as much propaganda as NK they just refuse to recognise it from the inside, which is simply propaganda working.
As long as you were a straight white Christian male, maybe.
Then why are so many non-white, non-Christians still flocking here? Why would anyone want to come to this country if it's such a hellhole?
I'm not buying it. Turn off the news and go out into society, preferably one of those small so-called racist communities. You'll find out the truth, one way or the other.
Well many had ancestors brought over in slave ships.
Others came to work the railroads because they were willing to trade racist abuse for economic benefits.
Are you really that unfamiliar with American history?
Why believe historical data? Just go outside and find your own anecdotes.
You mean the typically most oppressed minorities these days, given that you people freak out about these people constantly?
Are you saying that straight white Christen men are the most oppressed group in the US?
Yes, I believe they are unironically saying that.
What time period are you using as an example?
https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png
See: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
You are arguing the slippery slope, which may play out or may not. Instead, argue today, with the facts as they are not as you imagine they will be at some future point.
> With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing.
Don't kid yourself. That's what they want. They're slowly testing to find out how much they can get away with. Would you have imagined that the nation would quietly sit back and allow what's been done so far ten or twenty years ago? Just because there have been large protests doesn't mean anything. Congress should have been outraged on both sides at this madness, but one side only cares about winning (so they like it) and the other is completely feckless.
Winning arguments and solving problems are two different skillsets. And the US Congress is mostly people with the former. Not to say that winning arguments doesn't help when choosing a solution, but it is very different.
Or “To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” - Douglas Adams
its only with the benefit of hindsight (and being on the winning side- thus the propaganda was never dispelled) that we consider the stasi and so on the way we do.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.. might just be a duck.
I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.
> I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.
"normal life" under the Stasi was constant political terror and suppression.
The death counts are low because they thought death too little of a penalty for opposing them - they used psychological warfare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung) and torture instead.
The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims states that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 victims of the Stasi's use of psychological warfare, direct physical torture and gross human rights violations: https://web.archive.org/web/20210909114942/https://irct.org/....
Nobody that I know of in the USA felt compelled to build a giant balloon to fly their family to Canada yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany_balloon_escape
If we don’t try to delete the data off our phones then the anti-freedom brigade has already won.
We're just not at that stage yet, but we're getting there.
It's already a crime (in the books) to drive out of several red states for women's health care reasons, and they'll follow you on flock if they can.
Mark Bray had his and his family's airline tickets to Spain out of Newark "mysteriously cancelled" while in line after checking in their baggage.
Yeah, I wrote about this on HN before. Americans tend to imagine that WW2 ends and then East Germany immediately puts up a wall and now nobody can leave but it was way more gradual than that. The year the European war ended you could just walk across the border, you'd need to show some ID but you have ID because it was the war and Germans issued everybody with ID in the war. The Allies are manning the borders, they want to arrest Nazis, so ID saying you're a Nazi is a bad idea, but if you're just some farmer from outside Leipzig (so East Germany) you can easily cross. More than a Million people flee West. Are they foolish? You already know the answer.
By the end of the 1940s, things are tightening up, there are now armed "police" who in effect work for the Soviets "protecting" East Germany at the border, barbed wire and deep trenches now block unofficial crossings, but it is still definitely possible to leave, in the worst case maybe you bribe a guard. Hundreds of thousands are able to flee by "just" walking (or driving) West.
In 1952 the "Special Regime" begins to "keep out spies". Most of the border is sealed, you can't bribe your way when there is no official crossing, the remaining guards are told to shoot people who try to cross, after all none of them are legitimate. However since Berlin still has a crossing, and the West still seems hell bent on holding their half despite the fact it's cut off from the world, you could travel to East Berlin and sneak across to West Berlin. Over the next decade or so millions do, East Germany tried very hard to stop this, but because it was physically possible it seemed like there wasn't much they could do...
In 1961 they built the wall. It was no longer physically possible to escape.
I was told the famous Berlin crossing is called Checkpoint Charlie because checkpoint Alpha was on the Iron Wall (the one dividing Germany) and checkpoint Bravo was midway. At each checkpoint they would note the time. If you didn't make it to each checkpoint at exactly the right time they would consider that you'd stopped to do something illegal in between (you were only allowed to drive straight from the iron wall to Berlin), and you would be disappeared.
Not quite. Alpha is at the edge of West Germany, once past Alpha you are on an Autobahn (a highway) to Berlin and physically in East Germany but the Soviets have agreed that they won't do anything so long as you never stop until you reach Bravo at the border between East Germany and West Berlin. The route between Bravo and Charlie is inside West Berlin. Charlie's significance is that the Soviets will not (by the time Charlie is created) allow non-Germans to enter East Germany legally except via this point. The West has argued that this isn't what they agreed, but have eventually relented because it's apparent that arguing isn't helping.
The USA has already cancelled all passports of trans people, so they can't leave. I wonder who will be next.
I know they cancelled these passports but can anyone describe how they specifically communicated to our effected citizens?
Definitely it can always be worse and I think we need to break ridiculous laws. I know nothing about Mark Bray but that is a ridiculous thing that should adjudicated.
I sometimes wonder what the tipping point is for people, or whether there actually is one for many.
It's as if they are looking for an exacting duplicate of previous regimes before they become concerned—the agency name must be "Stasi" and uniforms must be of the same color.
The Rubicon is always still ahead of us, until it has been quite obviously behind us for quite some time. Nobody ever admits the moment of crossing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0YFdwfNh5vs
If US citizens can expect that if they write, post, publish, or say something critical of the government they'll get arrested for it, that's the line.
I think we have to wait for our moment of protest to arrive. We should keep our eyes open for opportunities for civil disobedience.
The moment never happens. It happened in all other descents to fascism, just like this one, that people kept waiting for the moment to protest and it never came and eventually it was too late.
Or the protest was ruthlessly crushed.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose>
I disagree that it never happens Rosa Parks is one example.
We think of them that way now in hindsight. But they could still buy milk and eggs.
Imagine the stories the currently ICE-detained could tell. Hunted in the streets like animals and stuck in cages, with no right to due process.
Sure, not as bad. Woohoo.
Be that as it may, observe that the directions are opposite.
Planning, attempting to, or helping people escape (not stay) was the #1 reason for Stasi arrests.
Specifically, the most frequent Stasi arrest charges were Republikflucht ("fleeing the republic") and Fluchthelfer ("helping others flee")
Also, the Stasi ran on roughly 1 informant per 60–180 residents. Your network of friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors would have several. They officially criminalized private speech, correspondence and travel. The US surveillance system is bad, but the Stasi informant network and set of official consequences was at such a level as to cause constant fear and dread for everyone.
Indeed. The rising flood of people feeling East for West Berlin was the very reason for the construction of the Berlin Wall.
So it's not the same unless it's the exact same? Like, with such good technology now, why would they waste time on so many informants? A Flock camera can replace several informants.
So you don't think there's any difference between
- as a citizen, being arrested for trying to leave
- as an illegal alien, being arrested for trying to stay
Those are literally structural opposites of each other.
Both are restrictions on freedom of movement.
As others point out, in the DDR one could not LEAVE. The main reason we have to have large sweeps for people coming here illegally is because administrations other than Obama and Trump turned a blind eye and did little enforcement. The Biden admin went to far as being negligent in their enforcement, so now there is a lot of backlog.
There are very few if any country that does not enforce immigration rules. Let any American try to live illegally in Canada. Sure, they can live under the radar like you can in Mexico too, but if they catch up to you, goodbye. Mexico doesn’t even treat its own returning citizens well. If you have not been a taxpayer you have to assume many things tax paying Mexicans get for free like education and healthcare. People act like we’re an aberration for enforcing immigration laws. We’re not. Go check out South Africa and see how they treat illegals.
It doesn't bode well for the US to compare itself to others in this regard.
The one place where any hard working person was welcome.
What is the protectionism even for? The US doesn't have a great social system that can be exploited.
Those"illegals"? They were making sandwiches and cleaning toilets, and this is their reward.
It's less about what they did after arriving and more about border violation itself.
Immigration has an official legal process to follow.
Why is that so bad? If the law needs to change - fine, change it. But allowing people to break the law is to enable collapse of the rule of law.
Ah, the law. Did the Stasi break the law?
Forgive my comparison, but it illustrates the problem.
The law cannot be allowed to become lawless itself, depriving the people of their rights to fast track the pre-determined punishment.
Try just walking into Mexico and staying there indefinitely. You'll have it far worse ... they don't play around.
Has anyone tried that? What happened? I imagine they were deported back to the USA, and probably had a nicer experience than USA deportees.
What country does not have immigration laws? We’re not unique in having them nor in enforcing them. Check out Taiwan, China, Singapore, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Peru, Canada, etc.
None of those have poorly trained, masked, armed kidnappers snatching people off the streets and shooting their citizens.
None of those are needed for enforcing immigration law. This is a choice, supported by a lot of people who should have known better.
Well, if previous presidencies hadn’t been derelict in their duties (e-verify, timely removals, ineligibility to benefits etc) we would not have been in this pickle. But, especially the Biden admin they _removed_ existing barriers, worked with NGOs to up the numbers of migrants arriving, many ending up illegal, means that there is a large backlog that normally would not need those measures had previous admins not been derelict. In the last 30 years only Obama and Trump enforced immigration laws.
I prefer the Japanese way and the Swiss way. Their citizens come first, foreigners come second. The needs of citizens come before the need for cheap labor. Every job is a decent job. No job is so bad that they can only get illegals to do them.
Yes we can have legal immigrants that fill skills gaps. Thats not an issue for 95% of Americans so long as it’s done justly (and not simply a way to pay workers less).
> I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.
That's wrong.
I am sure you do not speak German, because otherwise you'd have a lot more information available.
If you do speak German, listen to Dieter Hallervorden. Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJh9ejnpvFc
He explained why he escaped from the DDR. And they ALL knew that the cops were sniffing on them. Of course they considered the cops as evil and invasive, even by today standards.
But I consider what the US/UK are doing to be invasive, and if the governments fell I might be proven right (hell, Snowden already proved it over a decade ago- yet here we are).
He was not a “normal person”, normal people are like your neighbour who lives simply and doesn’t engage in politics except to share their discomfort about some relatively trivial grievance like the price of eggs.
Is that any different to how African Americans feel about the police? Or how Latinos feel about ICE today?
German people largely thought Hitler was the good guy and there's no way the h-caust actually happened, until several decades after the war ended.
Soviet era under Stalin was brutal.
Soviet famine of 1930–1933
"It is estimated that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died from starvation across the Soviet Union. In addition, 50 to 70 million Soviet citizens starved during the famine but ultimately survived."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...
Great Purge
"Scholars estimate the death toll of the Great Purge at 700,000 to 1.2 million."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
We blame the Soviet government for famine, but that’s not necessarily the opinion of people living at the time. Famine tended to occur every ~10 years due to natural weather variability so while 1930-1933 was unusually brutal it was just one of a very long string of famine. For example the Russian famine of 1921–1922 killed 5 million from a drought + WWI. Which was preceded by the famine of 1906-1908 which was preceded by the famine of 1901–1902, though these where less significant.
Famine was so common you need extreme outliers like 1601–1603 which killed ~1/3 of the population before they tend to show up in history books.
Statement of the State Duma. April 2, 2008.
The regions of the USSR (the Volga region, the Central Black Earth Region, the North Caucasus, the Urals, the Crimea, part of Western Siberia), Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus have suffered from the result of the famine caused by forced collectivization. About 7 million people were killed by hunger and illnesses associated with malnutrition in 1932–1933.
This tragedy does not have and cannot have internationally established signs of genocide and should not be the subject of contemporary political speculation.
Deputies of the State Duma, honoring the victims of the 1930s famine on the territory of the USSR, strongly condemn the regime that has neglected the lives of people for the achievement of economic and political goals, and proclaim the inadmissibility of the revival in the formerly included in the Soviet Union, totalitarian regimes that neglected the rights and lives of their citizens.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230329195700/https://holodomor...
"The causes of the Holodomor, which was a famine in Soviet Ukraine during 1932 and 1933 that resulted in the death of around 3–5 million people, are the subject of scholarly and political debate, particularly surrounding the Holodomor genocide question. Soviet historians Stephen Wheatcroft and J. Arch Getty believe the famine was the unintended consequence of problems arising from Soviet agricultural collectivization which was designed to accelerate the program of industrialization in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Other academics conclude policies were intentionally designed to cause the famine. Some scholars and political leaders claim that the famine may be classified as a genocide under the definition of genocide that entered international law with the 1948 Genocide Convention."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor
You might not realise it, but you're proving my point to some extent.
We don't look at the deaths of our own people as "oppressive" despite the fact that the circumstances that caused them to die was our system.
I'm not some bleeding heart liberal or anti-capitalist... I just have an open mind to the idea that we're not necessarily the good guys just because we are us and I look at what is factually true - as in, how could we be described by a non-sympathetic entity.
Everyone is their own hero. Nobody believes sincerely that they're the baddie.
Chronic lower respiratory diseases account for 145k people a year in the US, and that is a consequence (largely) of car dependence...
Or, more directly, 20,000 people a year die due to malnutrition and starvation, tallied over years (as most do) that can rapidly rise to over 100k in a half-decade.
The UK has an excess mortality rate of 330,000 linked to healthcare cuts (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/05/over-330000...).
I get that the numbers were talking about are much higher, but it doesn't follow logically to me that ordinary citizens knew that their government was the "bad" one with its actions.
Hell, I know Russian families who genuinely believe Putin is doing the right thing right now. So, I don't blindly accept that my government is right just because I think "we're the goodies".
I can't comment on the state of UK healthcare, but regarding the last paragraph, I too know Russian families who genuinely believe Putin is doing the right thing right now.
I know Russians who want to have nothing to do with Putin and want to live their life.
I have worked with both Russians and Ukrainians who fled Russia and Ukraine to escape mobilization (Personal note: it was interesting to see how good cooperation they had).
Companies like Flock and Palantir are explicitly an automated Stasi, and the advertising industry has already built another automated Stasi but it's not quite what the government wants (e.g. no ALPRs since they're useless for advertising).
I challenge you on falsifiability. What evidence would it take for you admit the US is Stasi level?
> but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing
At what point? It's easy to say when we mention the Stasi or the Nazis that we're comparing it to the end game they had going, but the transformation was a bit of process.
> what the Stasi was doing
the stasi were spying on people and putting them in jail. what exactly is your claim about the difference? is it a difference in distinction or a difference in degree?
If we're trying to find a difference in distinction, that has never been the case in the US. The police I've always been able to surveil and put people in jail.
I mean its so much easier to do stuff the Stasi could only dream of with technology today.
The very big difference to the Stasi is, people back then were really afraid to speak their mind, as there were real consequences fast, for doing things as stating your opinion about ghe government. And not creating attention while saying, I cannot speak up anymore! while speaking up all the time.
And yes, there are also consequences today .. but on a whole different level. So the US might head into a Stasi regime (or rather Gestapo) .. but they ain't there, not even close.
There are other big differences in the other direction, though. The Stasi couldn't have dreamed of the manpower efficiency of modern surveillance.
On the other hand, they had on average someone in every appartment block and every company directly reporting to them and doing on request other things. The human touch of spycraft. Nowdays spying on the population is automated.
Is that a difference? I'm still afraid, that's why I'm using Tor.
You are afraid to share your opinion about the government, so you have to use Tor?
Oh, about that. There would have been no Tor service in the GDR.
You're right that the US is not in the same universe as the Stasi was.
The US steals more data and conducts more illicit monitoring of people in a day than the Stasi ever could in a year. Its just that the Stasi lived in an analog world, so you had lots of PHYSICAL material leftover for people to point at in faux horror.
Even now, the US is busily deploying electric shock gloves whose main selling point, DIRECT FROM THE MOUTHS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, is that they allow pain to be administered to enforce "compliance", without leaving any real evidence.
And they are being trialed in Nebraska. On ... SCHOOL CHILDREN.
(and to complete the dystopian joke, check out the name of the company selling these Dr Doom gloves)
Whats that you hear? Howls of outrage & dissaproval from the denizens of "The Land of the Free" (tm)?
Err, no. Its just the wind blowing leaves around.
You sir are the proverbial frog who has been in the pan so long, he doesn't realise he's being boiled alive
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
-Mark Twain
You'd be surprised.
I also do find americans to be utterly naive regarding this slide towards fascism, and I live here so don't bother trying to explain it to me.
You only saw the end result regarding the "universe as what the Stasi was doing", obviously you didn't pay attention to the road getting there.
At this moment there are right wing conspiracies from people like Owens and Tucker that Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel because he was getting critical of them and would be against the war.
I am not saying that these conspiracies are true, but this is how fascism looks like. Putin doesn't arrest all of his political challengers, but he gets rid of the ones that are viable opponents. In case of Kirk, he is popular enough to make it big in politics and in the short term he could break the party narrative.
What makes you qualified and informed of what’s taking place to determine that?
What we hear about is far from comprehensive, and many of the atrocities won’t be unveiled or investigated until the next decade.
The Epstein cover up shows they’re used to keeping secrets.
I’m not sure why we’re pretending there’s not a convicted felon in charge of the entire system.
I am pretty sure someone discussing taking people to gas chambers in 1933 would also be called having a wild take. It's where the US is heading.
Fascism marches on in full swing.
Germans didn't believe there were gas chambers until the 50s or 60s.
Which is all the more reason that discussing it in 1933 would have been viewed incredulously. Your reply only strengthens the original comment.
> if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
I'm pretty optimistic that after the next general America will be ready to give up on the extremity of late turn over a new leaf. I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back.
The Soviets lost eventually, I don't think America can lose. Canadians like myself have watched America win for our country's entire existence; I am unconvinced that a decade of silliness is enough to compare America to East Germany.
In 2016 I remember Americans saying this was the end of the line and the country was doomed. 10y later they're richer than ever and its companies have global dominance of the most world-changing technology of the last 20y. I just don't think "the collapse" is coming anytime soon.
If anyone's interested in a friendly wager, my email is open. I'll happily go 1:1 odds that America will have a new president come 2029 and the country will still remain the world's richest and most powerful.
It just takes a bit of reading about American history to know that we have had authoritarian phases pretty much since our independence. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson policies against freedom of speech, native Americans and international trade, Fillmore and Buchanan fugitive slave act and Dred Scott, Lincoln suspension of Habeas Corpus, Cleveland using the military against unions, Johnson military expansion in Vietnam, Nixon secret bombings and using CIA/FBI against protesters. The nation was heavily polarized during each of these periods as much or more than it is today.
Interesting you say that, because as another Canadian, I would say that the sentiment in our country is the opposite of you describe. The actions of our government reflect it.
Canada is moving further from US, not closer. Canadians who support Americans are in the minority at the moment.
I'm not sure how a new US president would be able to turn it around.. further more, what's to say that the president thereafter will follow suit? How about the next 5?
The simple answer is we need constitutional reform. Term limits on SCOTUS, codification of norms (eg releasing presidential candidate tax returns, not blocking appointee confirmations indefinitely to steal the position for the next admin), anti corruption laws with teeth. Also things like reigning in the absurd executive power bloat that’s gone on since Lincoln. POTUS was never meant to be a king. There should never be a case where the executive can start a war (conventional, trade or otherwise) without even CONSULTING Congress.
This is all just reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
You can't turn corrupt officials into honest ones by changing the laws they're already turning a blind eye to. And you can't use systems (such as the political parties and their donors/owners) that exist to further corruption to reign it in.
Americans need to want honest governance, and be willing to go to the mat for it. Until and unless there's a substantial engaged minority will to do so, changing the rules is just theater. And if the government was honest, the existing laws are sufficient. Nothing stops Congress from removing Trump and the Supreme Court tomorrow, save their own lack of interest in doing so.
You are suggesting what you really need is a guillotine?
No. That might be what our current leaders deserve, but it won't fix the problem of grossly dysfunctional governance, particularly at the highest levels. Which makes it just a dangerous (to everyone) waste of effort. (And I do not mean just the current government. The whole kit & kaboodle, going back decades, has comprehensively failed.)
Personally, I think the best solution is to abandon the federal government as unfit for the purpose. Build a new one to handle what may actually be needed from the states and other existing and new interstate and international organizations. This will not be easy (gross understatement) but I think it is still more likely to succeed than any attempt to fix the current Constitutional government.
That can't happen from anything short of civil war.
If being an insurrectionist and convicted felon and neck-deep in the Epstein ring wasn't enough to sink the guy, I don't think anyone who voted for him (or anyone who for good or bad reason, abstained) would give a single flying fuck about his tax returns.
What matters is the taxi, not the checkers. Stuff like tax returns is window dressing.
You realize that it;'s not exactly democratic to change the rules just because you don't like who was elected democratically? That's the opposite of democracy.
Can democracy ever not work, by your definition? Or would any instance of it not working actually be it working?
Take him up on his bet then
America dominance on the world is ending, it's a fact. East Asia is at least on par, India is china from 25 years ago.
It's becoming more obvious every day. And yeah, people in 1910 watched Europe dominate the world for about 1500 years. Yet it came to an end.
If you want to Speedrun the collapse, vote for trump. He sure is making a good job right now with diplomacy, lack of long term planning and just getting all your allies to hate you.
I'm just not sure what to do. What the US is turning into is incredibly sad and I wish I could leave.
Just pick up and leave. Literally. And do not feel bad about it. Also ignore other people opinions. There is like a dozen of places to go to. The easiest? UAE freelancer visa. Yes I know, I know: "... but but the drones! The collapse!" It's all BS. When / if something happens there – go to Panama. Then Costa Rica. You are not alone on this route - but only if you really committed to your freedom. If not - just sit there and vote democrats. LOL.
That’s no way to live. How can you ever have a family or be part of a community? And what’s your plan for when you’re old?
Why would I want to move to an objectively more subjugated place?
Besides that, you say to just pick up and leave as if it were that easy. And I suppose if I followed your advice, it could be. Get a divorce, not care about the kids (sorry, but I'm not bringing my daughters there), ignore the fact my parents are in their 80s, server all my friendships, likely end my career.
Not all freedoms are good. Or rather some bindings, like family and other loved ones, are worth it.
I think this got flagged for the hyperbolic tone but you are directionally correct and I vouched this because I believe more people need to see it. Yes, leaving is hard. So is living under fascism. Do it anyway. You have a community? Bring the community. Yes it's very hard and not always possible. You have to try hard.
Your other morally correct option is to stand and fight.
Moving on from being a unipolar power does not necessitate societal collapse. The UK is still around and their empire fell a long time ago.
> If you want to Speedrun the collapse, vote for trump.
This nonsense needs to stop. You can’t vote for him again unless he deigns to run for a lower office (unlikely). Term limits are real. America needs to start planning for the post-Trump era and hopefully mitigate further damage with a blue wave in the midterms. Or with non-MAGA republicans who might even return to actual fiscal conservatism.
> This nonsense needs to stop. You can’t vote for him again unless he deigns to run for a lower office
Oh he will run again, and people will vote for him. The theory underpinning this is the fact that he did not serve consecutive terms and if you think that won’t work; all it takes is one party going along with it. And fuck you for downplaying what he is capable of.
His cognitive decline is increasingly evident, his approval rating is the lowest on record (for any president), he ran again last time because it was his best chance to stay out of jail. If he wants a peaceful dotage and doesn't want his legacy torn down, he's better to endorse Don Jr or Marco Rubio and rig the election at the margins if need be.
You keep saying it and it’ll happen. Stop saying it. You give credence to the idea by speaking it into existence. Stop believing and repeating their bullshit and letting them win.
If he tries, some states will keep him off the ballot and likely threaten secession if the feds attempt to force him through. That’s the point when doomers like you can decide to get your shit together and forge a compromise, or let the oligarchs have their way and light off a civil war.
Yes and I caused Jan 6 by calling out my local Rep. in December 2025 for telling his constituents to storm the Capitol and steal back the election. What compromise on this issue are you looking for?
The problem is talking about it like a foregone conclusion. You have already accepted he is going to run and are ready to convince the rest of America that he will be on the ballot. You are doing their job for them.
The compromise is that corrupt officials on both sides need punished. Both sides need reform. Neither party should have the kind of power Trump has seized. We don’t fix this by voting in a Dem who goes on a GOP witch hunt without also rooting out corruption in the DNC. There has to be enough consensus to pass constitutional reform, and you don’t get there with extremism or hate.
You use words like "should" while the other uses words like "is".
Yeah pretty dumb to talk about the future in the present tense imo
Because his party is already going along with it? This is playing out now, not some future hypothetical. There are already Trump 2028 signs. Already elected Republicans officials making the case for it. I know you’d like for people to shut up and go along, or better yet laugh it off.
We don’t need “both sides”, we need to punish corruption, period. What’s happening in the Trump administration and Republican Party isn’t remotely comparable to what came before it. Open corruption and bald face lies repeated all the way down to the individual. So there is no “one for one” fairness bullshit as you are trying to present it here - the reckoning needs to come regardless of how the corruption is distributed.
> The UK is still around and their empire fell a long time ago.
America is not an Empire. When America collapses it will definitely lead to societal collapse. The racial tensions are kept under control only because of the mirage of prosperity and equal opportunity. And when the mirage clears it will turn real ugly really fast.
> hopefully mitigate further damage with a blue wave in the midterms. Or with non-MAGA republicans who might even return to actual fiscal conservatism.
I don't think it is possible to fix this as it is a systemic issue. Irrespective of whether the next President is from D or R. All of the elite at the top know that it is a sinking ship, primarily due to the insane debt that has accumulated. There is absolutely no way to clear it the way it is going. Once AI bubble pops that is when downfall accelerates.
American imperialism is well documented. We have military outposts all over the world. Puerto Rico is still in essence a colony.
> When America collapses it will definitely lead to societal collapse. The racial tensions are kept under control only because of the mirage of prosperity and equal opportunity. And when the mirage clears it will turn real ugly really fast.
You say that like you want it to happen. Continuing to harp on that future is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you want a better America first you have to envision it instead of tearing it down.
> You say that like you want it to happen.
It has already started [1]. It has increased 100% since 2015. Just in the past decade alone. This is only reported hate crimes.
> If you want a better America first you have to envision it instead of tearing it down.
That ship has sailed long ago.
> American imperialism is well documented. We have military outposts all over the world. Puerto Rico is still in essence a colony.
Still not an Empire. You can call it an outward expansion or projection of power but not direct control. An Empire has direct control over colonies that send back tributes which run the Kingdom and give its residents prosperity, at the expense of residents of colonies who are taxed and deprived of their wealth. The tributes outweigh whatever growth is happening within the Kingdom itself. Puerto Rico or any of the military outposts are not equivalent. Puerto Rico does not run USA. USA losing Puerto Rico will not do anything to its economic or military power.
[1]: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-groups-have-experienced-...
good grief. people said this about the USSR right up until it collapsed. they also said it about Japan. this website is ridiculous. you people know this is an echo chamber, right? go outside
quit being a coward and stop creating new accounts to shit post. Like c'mon man.
Your day to day is still pretty much normal. If you turned off the news and never read about Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data [1] you'd just in your head remember there are tens of millions of folks flying, going through customs and border security and all that with 0 issues. What you wrote I think regarding the decade of silliness precisely supports the point, in my opinion.
[1] I'm not defending the behavior of border control here, but I also don't think we need to overreact to this one example which is exactly what is happening.
You have no real rights when police can kill, maim, or otherwise fuck you up with impunity even when you have done nothing wrong. Philando Castile and others demonstrate this. You may win in court but your life can be fucked up if the police decide to inflict non judicial punishment.
This is precisely the time to “overreact”. The government is clearly targeting dissidents and if we don’t “overreact” shit will get much worse.
We have kids sent to concentration camps. We have illegally deported U.S. citizens. The President has canceled monies allocated by Congress and signed into law. He is waging war against Iran without Congressional approval. He is openly selling pardons. The list goes on.
This isn’t enough to get you to “overreact”?
> You have no real rights when police can kill, maim, or otherwise fuck you up with impunity even when you have done nothing wrong.
Really? You have no rights now!? Jeez. When did that start? Was it on Inauguration Day or was it like, the day after Trump was elected? Or does it go back to the Obama years? Did you lose your rights when the police could kill, main, or otherwise fuck you up in 2017 or so when Trump was elected the first time and then gain them back when Biden was elected? Or have you never had rights since you were born? I can't seem to recall when police had this special power to officially take away your rights but maybe you know?
It's strange. I also lost my rights as you mentioned yet the other day I prayed to the Flying Spaghetti Monster in public in front of a police cruiser and nothing happened. Can you believe it?
That doesn’t mean you have rights. It just means you haven’t yet been targeted.
EDIT: Being in the position of not belonging to a group targeted for retribution by the government isn’t an indication of having rights. When black men who are legally carrying guns are murdered by police without consequence then we don’t truly have the right to own guns. It shows that if one ever becomes part of an out group then you too can be targeted.
Clearly you are not part of a targeted group so you feel safe and naively think nothing is amiss. This is ignorant foolishness.
No, I have rights. Nobody can target me for anything including the police. All you're doing is proving my point about sensationalism.
-edit to your edit-
Black people still have rights even if some cops do some dumb, illegal thing.
> Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data
Yeah, that's awful. As far as federal overreach of power goes, that's pretty inexcusable. I'd probably posit that COINTELPRO in the 60s was more insidious, but that doesn't discount this story individually being terrible.
I still maintain that America is not in the midst of its own demise and a comparison to East Germany is inaccurate.
> As far as federal overreach of power goes, that's pretty inexcusable.
Selectively detaining this guy, likely overreach.
Trying to get his phone's unlock code to go on a fishing expedition for whatever they can find, absolutely overreach.
But this guy catching felony charges for giving federal border police a duress PIN to wipe his phone when they asked for an unlock PIN? Not actually overreach.
You have the right to remain silent, not to lie to the police when detained (18 USC § 1001, and many state-level laws to the same effect also exist). Our justice system could not function if people had a right to lie to the police. Once you are detained, whether or not that detention is eventually determined to be lawful, destroying or disposing of your possessions to prevent police from accessing them is also generally a crime.
You fight abuses later, in court. Or, if you're going to use a duress PIN in the moment, you accept the legal consequences.
And yes, giving a duress PIN to wipe a phone when asked for an unlock PIN is a lie which may result in destruction of evidence. And no, the law does not care about "I'm not touching you"-level rationalizations of whether something is a lie or whether it was technically the police who entered the code to wipe the phone. Proximate cause is a longstanding legal concept.
> But this guy catching felony charges for giving federal border police a duress PIN to wipe his phone when they asked for an unlock PIN? Not actually overreach.
I think it's an interesting case that will get litigated in the courts. It seems they'll have to prove that the phone contained "evidence"; it could have just had embarrassing personal photos that he didn't want shared. When a house is raided and someone flushes a toilet, can courts assume they flushed drugs, or does that have to be proven?
I hope he's found not guilty, but either way this definitely is not the "sky is falling", "we're almost a police state" case that folks here are making it out to be. It's a very narrow and novel line.
> When a house is raided and someone flushes a toilet, can courts assume they flushed drugs, or does that have to be proven?
Game it out at the systems level. If the prosecution had to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that what was destroyed would have been evidence, then destruction of evidence would be functionally permissible whenever done competently.
> ...either way this definitely is not the "sky is falling", "we're almost a police state" case that folks here are making it out to be. It's a very narrow and novel line.
Agreed. And activists should generally work with lawyers in order to be familiar with areas of the law they are likely to encounter in the course of their activism. Especially activists who travel internationally.
> then destruction of evidence would be functionally permissible whenever done competently.
Well yes, but ... is that not the case? Game out the opposite. If the prosection doesn't have to demonstrate that something was valid evidence beyond a shadow of doubt that's rife for all sorts of abuse.
In general I don't believe I can catch a (legitimate) felony for locking myself in the bathroom and flushing the toilet during a police raid.
You can't, but you can if you flushed the cocaine. You should also be worried they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you flushed cocaine, even if you only flushed your urine.
> In general I don't believe I can catch a (legitimate) felony for locking myself in the bathroom and flushing the toilet during a police raid.
Most juristictions have a duty to preserve or not to spoil evidence once you are clearly detained or a search is clearly imminent (i.e. the police are knocking on your door), or when litigation can be reasonably anticipated. Behavior like locking the door and then burning/shredding papers, wiping a phone, or even flushing a toilet can absolutely be considered destruction-of/tampering-with evidence past that point, even (and especially) if the evidence is impossible to recover.
I feel like you aren't responding to what I wrote there. My point was that there's presumably no clear evidence that I was destroying evidence in that example even if I was. The example was in regards to the point made in the preceding paragraph.
> If the prosection doesn't have to demonstrate that something was valid evidence beyond a shadow of doubt that's rife for all sorts of abuse.
Assuming that is the preceding paragraph you reference, then there is nothing to respond to because the law is clear. As zugi mentions, obstruction of a federal investigation by tampering with evidence (i.e. potentially anything in the scope of a particular search of which you are aware) in just about any sort of way is illegal under 18 USC § 1519 (and again, most states have similar laws with regard to state officials/departments and searches).
This subthread, the general thread, the linked article, and the original event it covers are all within the context of someone aware they are detained or under investigation. In that context, the prosecution doesn't need to demonstrate that what was destroyed is evidence. Just that the suspect obstructed the search by destroying, altering, or tampering with something in the search's lawful scope.
This state of affairs isn't any more or less rife for abuse than the general process for obtaining a warrant or the standards for an officer assessing probably cause.
Right fair point "evidence" versus "lawful scope". Precision and accuracy of terminology aside, surely you can see the core point I was making there that unless all details (the act of destruction, scope, intent, etc) are demonstrated beyond doubt there's huge potential for abuse.
The details you mention are all hammered out to death and back as a regular part of the legal process, before and during a trial, and by both prosecution and defense. One can only imagine a huge potential for abuse by suspending any and all familiarity with that legal process.
So it turns out destroying a record to obstruct an investigation is also a crime under 18 U.S. Code § 1519. For that they wouldn't need to prove that it was "evidence" or even that it was relevant.
So as much as I sympathize with the guy a d wabt to cheer him on, he's probably screwed.
I find it interesting that you can’t lie to the police but the police can (and do) lie to you. Why?
I'd generally agree that the police shouldn't be able to lie to a detained suspect, or at least that such deception should be more constrained than it is in the context but, in general, the law as practiced hinges on the question, "does police deception render a detained suspect's confession or statements involuntary?"
If yes, then those confessions or statements could become inadmissable (i.e. the suspect was effectively compelled to testify against himself, in violation of the 5th Amendment). When police combine deception with coercion or threats, the answer to that question leans toward yes, but it will depend on the juristiction and the judge and is often assessed on a case-by-case basis. Police in any given juristiction probably have a reasonably good sense (from their own accumulated experience and local training) of what kind of deception results in the produced evidence becoming inadmissable in the courts where the defendant will appear.
> And yes, giving a duress PIN to wipe a phone when asked for an unlock PIN is a lie which may result in destruction of evidence.
I was distressed and got confused and gave the wrong PIN. Anyway there was no evidence on the phone just a few embarrassing photos.
Also I just so happened to catch a bad case of indigestion right as the police knocked down my door. There were absolutely no drugs in the toilet when I flushed it.
To me the far more concerning fact is that this is getting any pushback at all. The response described is what everyone ought to do without exception when asked for their PIN by law enforcement. The right not to be forced to provide access to your own devices needs to be staunchly defended. These devices serve as extensions of ourselves at this point.
> I was distressed and got confused and gave the wrong PIN. Anyway there was no evidence on the phone just a few embarrassing photos.
> Also I just so happened to catch a bad case of indigestion right as the police knocked down my door. There were absolutely no drugs in the toilet when I flushed it.
To repeat, for emphasis: the law does not care about "I'm not touching you"-level rationalizations.
> The response described is what everyone ought to do without exception when asked for their PIN by law enforcement. The right not to be forced to provide access to your own devices needs to be staunchly defended.
If by "response described" you mean "remain silent," then absolutely. Not 100% clear from your last paragraph.
> the law does not care about "I'm not touching you"-level rationalizations.
But it does AFAIK care about plausible deniability. Whether or not any given instance of denial is plausible must of course ultimately be determined by a judge.
> Not 100% clear from your last paragraph.
The "response described" was (I think quite clearly) "provide a duress PIN that wipes the device in violation of the law". I am advocating for civil disobedience in defense of privacy and the right not to self incriminate. These devices have become extensions of ourselves but the law does not currently treat them as such which I see as a violation of my fundamental rights.
Actually even if they were recognized as an extension I don't believe there's any prohibition against reading people's minds. It's just that the technology doesn't exist yet. But it likely will soon so we badly need to update the law to account for that IMO.
> But it does AFAIK care about plausible deniability. Whether or not any given instance of denial is plausible must of course ultimately be determined by a judge.
There is near zero chance that a judge or jury will decide you have plausible deniability for providing a duress PIN when asked by police for an unlock PIN. It is your phone, you had to configure the duress PIN when setting up the phone, knowing what it does, and provide it to police instead of the unlock PIN.
> I am advocating for civil disobedience in defense of privacy and the right not to self incriminate.
You have a right to silence, not a right to lie, and certainly not a right to lie in a way that is the proximate cause of destruction of evidence during a lawful search. Call the lie civil disobedience all you like, but expect totally avoidable federal felony charges in cases like then one at hand, when all you had to do was remain silent (especially as in this case with a GrapheneOS device).
> I don't believe there's any prohibition against reading people's minds
Common law often doesn't require specific prohibitions (or specific updates in the manner of computer code) because the practice of common law has long functioned on the good faith application of human reason and common sense by jurists. Consider the relevant language of the 5th Amendment: "...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..." I think it's extremely likely that, when mind-reading tech is invented, it will be treated as a form of compelled testimony, and therefore impermissible against a defendant (though potentially permissible against a witness with immunity).
I disagree. Back then it was all a big secret. Officially the US was pretending.
Now? It is all out in the open. They're BOASTING about it. The baddies do whatever they want and noone is going to do anything about it besides write a blog. There will be no 1970s backlash with progressive Supreme Court judges and a senate committee investigating Hover.
Despite the normalization of masked federal gunmen kidnapping people based on the color of their skin and the language they speak.... Not even breaking a law in the process, the supreme court legalized racial profiling.
One can just argue about the normalization of people breaking the law by overstaying visas or hopping the border or whatever being the Supreme Court (or whoever you feel like blaming) legalized some other concept that most Americans also find disagreeable.
We don't have to have brown shirts pulling people off the street, and we also don't need to have this stupid fight over simply enforcing our borders like every other country on the planet. Extremists on both sides are as always, simply incorrect. Reject MAGA, reject DSA.
In context to my OP, none of this stuff or policy really affects most people's day to day lives. If you turned the news off you'd probably have no clue people were jumping the border en masse and you'd likely have no clue that those very same people were being arrested and deported.
… very same people were being arrested and deported.
This is an indication you don’t understand what is going on. Some illegals have been deported but amongst those illegals are U.S. citizens and people who are legally allowed to be here. They are being deported without judicial oversight and in some cases in direct violation of judicial orders.
… none of this stuff or policy really affects most people's day to day lives.
Man. What a profoundly immoral thing to say and believe. This illegal shit going on doesn’t affect more than 49.999% of the population so… no big deal.
It is people like you that Martin Luther King described in his letter:
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
> This illegal shit going on doesn’t affect more than 49.999% of the population so… no big deal.
Well it’s more like 95%, and you’re also injecting a false distinction here to suggest 49% of folks think one thing and 51% think another when most Americans have more nuanced views on immigration policy and broadly agree that a legal process must be followed.
I’m ignoring the righteous pearl-clutching (MLK/don’t know what you’re talking about/immoral whatever). I really don’t care.
You are the one who said “doesn’t affect most people”.
But now, what you write is it’s only 5% of the people being affected. Damn. So you acknowledge 5% are affected but that’s ok. It’s only 5%. It is profoundly immoral to think nothing is amiss because it only affects 15 million or so people. It’s not righteous pearl clutching to be alarmed when my neighbors are being illegally targeted. Having a conscience and an ounce of empathy is not righteous pearl clutching. As Edmund Burke said, all that is necessary for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.
Illegal wars, illegal deportations, illegal cancellation of appropriated funds, illegal bribes to give pardons, etc. and your response is that the people alarmed by this are engaging in righteous pearl clutching. You are the problem.
I’ll read any response you wrote but won’t respond further. Those who remain silent while others are terrorized are dispicable.
> You are the one who said “doesn’t affect most people”.
Because it’s true.
> But now, what you write is it’s only 5% of the people being affected.
Well you wrote it was 49% or something. Me saying 5% is still in the bounds of “vast majority not affected”. I’m being generous here as the number is likely even lower and that’s accounting for folks who hired folks or extended family or whatnot.
> It’s not righteous pearl clutching to be alarmed when my neighbors are being illegally targeted.
Are they here illegally? I would expect (aside from heavy handed tactics which I broadly disagree with) that they would eventually be found and deported just like anyone else in any other country. What exactly are you suggesting is “being illegally targeted”?
> Illegal wars, illegal deportations, illegal cancellation of appropriated funds, illegal bribes to give pardons, etc. and your response is that the people alarmed by this are engaging in righteous pearl clutching.
Illegal taxes, illegal immigrants, illegal drone strikes, illegal lockdowns
Don’t accuse me of pearl clutching though. You just have to accept my declaration that things are illegal and anyone who disagrees must be immoral and part of the problem. In the words of some famous person, I declare famous saying!!
That’s the argument you’re making and as an independent who can’t stand MAGA or DSA + associates it’s very tiresome. I reject illegal immigration, and I reject heavy handed policing especially by untrained wannabe-be tough guys. If you’re going to turn that into all of these other accusations you’re extremism is the actual problem, not me.
I hope one day you feel as appropriate amount of shame for your part in this horror.
I feel like drawing an equivalence here is morally dubious
I don’t believe I equated any two things, but if you in fact read my comment that way this comment is now clarifying you and informing you otherwise.
>We don't have to have brown shirts pulling people off the street
That is literally the stage we are in now. You sent it because you are in support of it and to cowardly to admit it. It's the same cowardice that motivated them to wear masks
>In context to my OP, none of this stuff or policy really affects most people's day to day lives
The fact that this doesn't bother you speaks volumes about the kind of person you are
> That is literally the stage we are in now.
No we're not, and when it started to look like we were heading that way in some limited fashion the public fought back and stopped it, people were fired, and the heavy-handed tactics mostly stopped. In true brown shirt regimes (Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, &c.) they don't stop the heavy handed tactics. In Iran they murdered over 30,000 people for it point blank with automatic weapons.
> You sent it because you are in support of it and to cowardly to admit it. It's the same cowardice that motivated them to wear masks
I don't support it. And I've said that multiple times. I also don't think they should wear masks.
I also have no cowardice about saying anything on the Internet. When you write things like that you sound silly. What's going to happen? Do you think I'm going to get in trouble like it's high school or something for saying an opinion that you happen to disagree with that the public by and large agrees with?
We should control our borders and deport people who violate our laws. Also we shouldn't do all these bad things and treat people inhumanely. The horror! The cowardice! Give me a break.
> The fact that this doesn't bother you speaks volumes about the kind of person you are
I didn't say it doesn't bother me, I said that it doesn't affect most people's day-to-day lives. There's a key difference and if you spent less time grandstanding and more time reading what I actually wrote you would realize that difference.
Its the same in Russia. Ignore the news go through life, don't say anything about the government. Once in a while people will fall down from windows and die of radiation poisoning of course but thats ignorable.
Normal day of a normal person living in dictatorship ... is normal. There are sometimes periods where a lot of people are at risk at the same time, but they pass.
Many people lived their normal lives through communism with no issue. They ignored bad stuff and abuses just like your tv turning off person.
And yet, they were living in dictatorship. And found out if they tried to do something different.
Well, all might be fine, you might be a little obedient drone, not angering your masters, making sure to be apolitical - only to be mobilized & send to die in a ditch in a useless war.
We're not living in a dictatorship or anything close to it. Communist regimes killed tens of millions of people outright. Rather important difference.
Let me channel a person in the communist regime.
"Pshhhtt, the regime isn't oppresive. Sure, there is the securitate, but it's much better now, see, they released the political prisoners. Yes, some people got killed, but they were stirring waves, going around saying shit. You got to mind your business and go to work and not mind all the political stuff and you're fine. Ez-pz. Not sure what the fuss is about we are a great country, look how much stuff we make!"
It's honestly insulting to people who have actually lived and died under dictatorial regimes, communist regimes, and other barbaric forms of government and those who, and many times they've been Americans, who fought and died to preserve liberty for others in the United States and elsewhere, for you to sit here and say that they now live in the United States which is also a dictatorship.
Anyone who has experienced anything like real suffering would tell you the United States is a wonderful country and is a land of freedom and prosperity, even if at times it is flawed and imperfect. Tell the Filipino bakery that just opened in my home town that they live in a dictatorship, go tell the Iranian dissidents in Los Angelas that they had more freedom under the Iranians, go tell the folks in Hong Kong that the US is a brutal dictatorship. You'll get laughed out of the parking lot.
Your dislike of Donald Trump or whatever (he should be in jail because of Jan 6 - uh oh I hope the gestapo doesn't come get me for insulting dear leader - interesting how they can't, isn't it?) doesn't change anything. Was it a dictatorship for the 4 years under Biden's term? Or only a dictatorship while Trump is the elected president? Not only is your characterization incorrect from a philosophical standpoint, it's functionally incorrect too. If we lived in a dictatorship we wouldn't even have elections let alone any number of other constitutional checks. Or have you not been paying attention when the Trump administration loses a court case and quietly accepts the consequences? What dictatorship is bound by the rule of law, can be removed from power by an election, and has to respect Constitutional rights?
Give me a break with this crap.
I was born in a country while under the communist regime. My grandfather was killed by the communists. I, myself, did not live very much under the communist regime, but I vividly remember the 90's, which, while not politically oppressive in the way the communist regime was, were in some ways, much worse economically. What I did see is how people remember the communist regime and how they seem to have perceived it from within. Yes, they were afraid, but they did continue their lives and in some ways, quite happy lives.
I think I failed to convey some critical parts with my post. The _feeling_ I describe is the actual outlook that most people had during that time. I am not saying that the US is at that point yet, what I am trying to say is people don't usually wake up one morning and just say "Ah, ok, now I'm living under an oppressive regime" things just change and many times they will defend said regime. Just sample asking a bunch of Chinese people what they think about their current regime. I bet many of them will be quite happy with the arrangement and how things are going although they are clearly living under authoritarianism.
Yes, in many ways the US has many institutions that still work, but they have been eroding at an astonishing speed under the cheers of 1/3 of the population. If I use the same logic of projecting into the future the rate of change that... AI proponents use for example... How free do you think the US will be in 5, 10 years? You're not there yet, but factoring all the things going on, your country has done a capital mistake.
I personally am a bit frightened of what will happen in November since you have a president that has been consistently eroding the rule of law, put sycophants in positions of leadership, showed disdain for the rule of law, and elections and institutions, allies, general competency.
You might confuse my emotion with one of disdain or hatred for the US or, competitive aggression or impotent denial and projecting for dissatisfaction in my own country. ? But that's not it. My emotional state relative to the US is one of someone grieving after a personal hero I used to look up to who got brain damage and now goes down the street with a loaded gun yelling incoherent ramblings.
Most major industrialized nations have gone through something like this and it usually takes much longer than 10 years to escape and correct.
> 10y later they're richer than ever
Overall as a country, undoubtedly. However, a vast majority of Americans are worse off than a decade ago.
A lot of wealth was created, relatively little went to the people though.
> I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back.
I'm pretty sure that barring shenanigans we'll get an D president next time. I'm also pretty sure that we're kicking many cans (economic and otherwise) down the road that are set to blow up during the next administration so that we'll likely be back here again in 2032 with an R. Remember, after Watergate Carter was able to win in 1976 because people were tired of corruption - at the time most people thought that another R administration wouldn't happen for a couple of decades at least. But Reagan(R) won just 4 years later in 1980.
I'm also pretty sure that given the goldfish memory that most American voters have that a hereditary Trump dynasty isn't at all off the table. Look at the Philippines: they have a Marcos in power again. Look at Peru: they've got a Fujimori in power again.
Counter point is, throughout history America didn’t have a competition that surpassed it across many standards. Japan got very close, but got contained in some ways. China doesn’t need to play ball.
I’ve mentioned it in the past as well - all actions look like a knee-jerk reactions and hail marys to try to regain the power.
> I don't think America can lose
It has already lost. America lost in Vietnam. Lost in Afghanistan. Turned Middle East into a humongous mess. Now losing badly in Iran. The only "wins" it had were against Countries where odds were already heavily in its favor (in other words invading tiny countries that did not have the technological wherewithal or the will necessary to fight back).
> 10y later they're richer than ever
The rich are richer than ever yes. Ask any common American citizen and he/she will come chasing after you for saying this.
> its companies have global dominance of the most world-changing technology of the last 20y. I just don't think "the collapse" is coming anytime soon.
That dominance is fast eroding. America itself has ended globalization. It is retreating from many crucial positions: like when it comes to cross-border payments, protecting freedom of navigation in high seas, deals that it had previously negotiated with all countries of the World, unable to protect allies in the Middle East and even in South East Asia, not delivering on defense commitments with partner nations... the list goes on and on.
> If anyone's interested in a friendly wager, my email is open. I'll happily go 1:1 odds that America will have a new president come 2029 and the country will still remain the world's richest and most powerful.
None of us believe America will collapse by 2029 and that there wouldn't be another President (unless Trump is really stupid enough to go down that route which I don't think he will). But by 2045? Yeah absolutely is possible.
Doubt it. At the very least optimistically it must wait the deaths of the current MAGA voterbase, so at least 40-50 years.
> some level of normalcy
You are undoubtedly correct that at some point there will be new leadership in the US.
Politics makes leadership change a possibility. Biology makes it an inevitability.
But I don't think the evidence is very strong that switching from one man to a different man, even if the new man wears a blue hat instead of a red hat, will make that much difference against capital and its surveillance state.
This isn't a false equivalence "both sides" argument. I'd greatly prefer the blue hat over the red hat.
But the blue hat only makes the underlying forces of late capitalism a little slower and a little less vicious, while simultaneously legitimizing that system.
"Nothing would fundamentally change." And he meant it.
Yeah, mostly agree but playing devils advocate, PRISM was authorized under bush, implemented under Obama, and is being abused by Trump. Obama promised safeguards, but it’s pretty clear those were just a ruse. It’s only going to get worse. The well deserved controversy around Flock is the perfect example.
I feel like a reversal of authoritarianism is coming but we can't take it for granted.
“Silliness” I have masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles barking orders at US citizens in my neighborhood and zip-tying minors who did nothing but run away and cry. I have neighbors cheering it on. Not silly at all when you see it up close.
If they are masked men in unmarked vehicles, how do you know they’re federal agents? Aren’t they just criminals that you should call the police to stop?
And you have the Attorney General of the United States, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security saying "it doesn't matter, if they tell you they're federal agents, you need to comply."
But excuse me, Mr Masked Man, let me call the local police just in case you're not actually federal agents... is probably going to get the same reaction whether they're criminals or ICE agents.
Oh give me a break dude.
I'm skeptical that we will have an exchange of power in the next 40 years.
The USSR is a great example: it took 65 years to fall, and the collapse didn't bring it to anything particularly good.
I agree. It's actually quite insulting to other countries whose actual atrocities were measured in lives lost. I voted for Kamala but Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. He's just a loser, he's not even remotely brave enough to be Hitler Jr.
The guy doesn't have the stomach for real totalitarianism. Just populism, corruption, and weakening the country.
> Trump Derangement Syndrome is real
If only I could convey how ridiculous this sounds looking from outside in.
Who cares what you think?
You, obviously, since you bother typing cheeky replies.
Yes but many who support him and bankroll him do. They use him as a public thermostat to keep upping the heat to see if any of the frogs jump.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is just another word for "describing Trump actions in honest realistic terms rather then whitewashing them".
And considering how right talks about Mandani, Biden, Harris ... it is ridiculous that the derogatory term goes only toward ... people who talk about Trump.
The USA started from and has come back from way worse in the past.
Some dark, dark things happened in the USA, and almost every progression had a corresponding backslide - but the tick-tock has always ticked further towards a freer, more equal, and more equitable society.
Progress doesn’t always (ever?) require complete collapse.
I’m willing to hope this era is another ‘tock’. But that does require people to not just give up (or even work to accelerate the backslide?!) as you seem to be suggesting is the best course of action.
>but the tick-tock has always ticked further towards a freer, more equal, and more equitable society.
This is a popular sentiment, not a statement of historical fact. Arguments both for and against this are credible.
You can make a credible argument that the American society is less free, less equal, and less equitable than it was at its founding?
There are just so many ways in which this seems crazy to me. I feel like you think you’re luring me into some sort of rhetorical trap - but to pick the two elephants in the room, a large proportion of the population was literally owned by other people, and only white male landowners could vote.
That wasn’t the claim: it was that the tocks always outpace the ticks.
One area that this extremely obviously does not align with is immigration. Privacy is another area in steady decline for generations.
It’s very reasonable to consider that in many areas we may regress to a mean somewhere in between founding days and the peak.
Exactly. It is a high dimensional space and it depends which sample you select
Income tax did not exist at the time of founding. The freedom to spend freely from the fruits of one's labor has been lost.
I don’t think any reasonable person would think I am claiming that every ‘tick’ makes things better along every possible axis for every possible person. It’s pretty obvious that judging whether America’s ‘ticks’ have been towards ‘a freer, more equal, and more equitable society’ means considering the state of society in aggregate.
On your particular example, there are lots of debates to be had about forms of taxation and which kinds are ‘fairer’ - but more importantly, and more overwhelmingly: eighteen percent of the population of America was literally owned by other people in 1790. They couldn’t ‘spend freely from the fruits of one's labor’ to any extent at all.
Your line of argumentation asserts that freedom has increased over time with allowances for any form of subjugation by the government short of enslavement. I don't doubt that you're making a good faith argument, but it doesn't engage with the real problem of abuse of power and disenfranchisement of the people because no matter how bad it gets for the average citizen it will never be as bad as chattel slavery. It's hard to argue in good faith on a nuanced issue with someone who has a one liner mic drop response to everything.
Do you honestly think that our society was more (or as) equal 200 years ago than it is today?
Or even 50 years ago? Even in the 1970s, there were places in the United States that women couldn't get a checking account without a man co-signing on the loan.
We can certainly take issue with how rich countries oppress and exploit poor countries today, but you can't honestly say it is worse today than it was during colonialism.
Life in Nauru today seems much worse than the colonial period
Prior to the enclosure period of English common law, land was assumed to be available to the private use of government subjects. The American West was the same before it was swallowed by the US government. The current situation is provably less free along this dimension. You could argue that this is not important relative to other things (this is a value judgement), or that things done outside of the state are outside of the discussion (this is a a fallacy, a lot of things once outside of the state find themselves inside it today), or you could say that this does not account for intra-community conflict between settlers and natives (this is a straw man)
This defeatism is unhelpful. I'll not simply surrender the country that I love, thanks.
Especially to someone who is unlikely to even be here.
Doing nothing is surrender. So what do you propose people do? What are you doing? Is it effective?
> So what do you propose people do?
Vote
> Is it effective?
Obviously yes. Imagine for a second that you're a MAGA supporter, anti-abortion, stick it to the liberals type of person. Would you say that voting has been effective to get the things you care about passed into law (or repealed)?
You absolutely would.
> if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era
That's just too ridiculous and absurd for most people to accept, thankfully. I accept reality, not social media narratives.
And to add to that, a very loyal set of voters who will literally vote for more of the same even when it directly and empirically makes their lives worse.
CBP/FBI could have shot or tortured him or his loved ones after he provided the bad key, but didn't
his rights still did apply and do apply for now at least
I mean ICE could have arrested him and shipped him off to a foreign country too, even if a federal judge orders them not to, too.
Except, while not in this case, they've done exactly that in hundreds of cases at this point.
We have unprecedented corruption in the White House but much of the other stuff is not new territory. It’s bad and a regression I hate to see. But we can always improve when the people demand better. The people always have the power, even if they don’t realize it.
For the most part nothing has changed.
I remain hopeful that we will react to this latest test by improving the guardrails again. The current regime does not by any means have the popular support of the citizenry, so there is every reason to expect some backlash and consequences on the other end of this. It'll take years, though, to work through.
It's encouraging to see 80% of Democrats think the DNC needs its leadership replaced.
> The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding > the best you can do from here is speedrun the collapse
Sorry arrogant bitch, it's not gonna happen
> US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era
> The social dynamics are the same - the abuses, the selective enforcement, the lack of recourse, the same characters in the roles of various levels of "law enforcement" and "politics"
What you're describing is politics in general. The question is not whether abuses occur (they do, everywhere), but whether the system is built to be resilient and course-correct over time.
The thing about freedom is not just that it's less miserable than the alternative; more importantly, freedom enables a feedback loop where people's individual choices carry corrective information: what they buy, what they sell, how much, at what price, who they vote for, what they write/publish, what they read, what they say etc. The system at large can correct itself over time if (a) these choices are allowed to have power to influence the system, and (b) the courts enforce justice without interference by the ruling party.
Not a single communist country in the 20th century stayed communist for more than a few years when only 2 freedoms were allowed: (1) freedom of the press, and (2) freedom of the courts from control by the ruling party.
The Soviets and East Germans suppressed every form of freedom that carried information or potential corrective power, because they maxxed on staying in power above all - they effectively had to. No one wants to be under real communism/socialism[0], so for it to be stable it has to be maximally suppressive.
[0] see various records of escape attempts, such as https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/politics-and-governm...
This has been legal since long before Trump, if you don't like it there's laws in motion to ban it you can support, but entering across a border you've been allowed to be searched without a warrant for decades at least. And if you're being searched and then you destroy what they're trying to search... Here you are.
From the article:
“ he has been ensnared by National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, a sweeping directive issued by President Trump last September that expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include crimes like getting in the way of immigration enforcement. His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charging a person with destroying evidence using a program designed to wipe a device clean after a specific code is entered.”
So, while “no privacy at the border” has always been a thing, the re-categorisation of this as “domestic terrorism” is new.
Is the actual charge destruction of evidence, or terrorism? Because if it's the former, then it looks a lot like a plausible legal case.
Destruction of evidence. But sounds like they were searching him in the first place under Trump's new counter-terrorism rules.
Quite possibly the worst take I’ve ever read on hacker news. “Things are generally bad now so the entire country should roll over and get fucked.” What are you even thinking dude? Maybe take a walk outside or something..
Hallelujah!
> The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding
This is HN. https://xkcd.com/538/
The tendency to describe things that are so essentially characteristic of the capitalist imperial core as resembling the Soviet Union is always so funny
The US has it's mid-term elections this november, and it's possible, and even likely, that the Democratic candidates will win overwhealmingly. The Democrats are not a monolith, either, the Democratic Socialists of America political group is the very progressive part of the Democratic party, they are the ones that are not accepting dark money campaign donations. I do not agree with a lot of the unrealistic things that some DSA candidates have said, but those or the candidates that aren't winning the primaries. There is a giant blue tidal wave coming in November. Trump will become nothing more than a lame duck "president", and he'll likely be impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate and the Justice System will probably be the final arbiter of his fate. That's the way I see it. And I never believed I would be saying what I just said, but the fact is that since trump was elected, the democrats have flipped 31 (at last count) formorly Republican held seats, and the republicans have flipped exactly zero seats from democrat to republican. The American People are not their goverment, especially right now, even though that's not how it was meant to be, but I know one thing, they are fed up and enough is enough.
People have no idea. They’re destroying old books. Just like the last time (1), and the time before that (2), and the time before that(3), which were:
1) Nazi Germany, following debt/inflationary collapse of Weimar Republic.
2) Bolshevik Revolution, following WWI induced debt collapse of Tsars.
3) French Revolution, following debt collapse of Monarchy.
Now where are we? 40 trillion in debt. The interest is $1.1 trillion the amount added to it yearly is $2.1 trillion. The entirety of a government spending would need to be wiped out just to keep it where it is.
If you had the books that got burned, you’d know the cycle, and the fact that electing democrats isn’t gonna change a damn thing.
AI companies are destroying old books. This has nothing to do with the government.
These AI companies know by now that there is no real monetization path that will recoup the over 1 trillion dollars invested by these companies. There is a circular spending spree among large corporations paying each other massive amounts of money to try to make the promise of AI real. It's not. Is it neat? Yeah. Is it reliable? No.
Where the money is not coming from are consumers. There is no consumer market for AI that stands a chance of making these companies profitable.
It's a bubble. Just like the sub-prime mortgage loan debacle of 2008. It's going to burst. These companies are large enough that the government will declare them necessary, and will give a large portion of the taxes we pay to these companies to keep them afloat.
Ah yes, the government bailout, and the government will decide who pays the real price. And that will be me, and you and the rest of us that aren't rich.
These AI companies are aware of this, or they wouldn't take the gamble. So I would have to disagree and say that the government is and will be involved in how all of this plays out.
I think the best case scenario is that the democrats win sufficient control of congress that they can both stop the legislative agenda (to the extent it even exists) and interfere enough with presidential executive actions that everything stalls until we reach the next presidential election.
I have exactly zero expectations of real consequences to Trump. He has far too much popular support for that to be realistic. But I will say that everybody else in his regime better hope he writes them a broad preemptive pardon before he leaves office because the teflon only works for him.
Why would the democrat party do that, when it largely agrees with everything that's happening?
Trump knows a lot of dirt on a lot of very powerful people, and he likely has dementia. One thing about dementia is that it can cause people to say things they normally would not say. That's a huge risk to those that are afraid he's going to start blurting out these secrets. That makes him a liability to the kind of people that can make anyone worth more dead than alive.
This is obviously pure speculation on my part, but I think it's quite plausible.
> I have exactly zero expectations of real consequences to Trump. He has far too much popular support for that to be realistic.
That's the problem. He has wide support despite gestures around. The thing a large part of the population supports _this_. It's not going away. This is the reason that people are bearish on US future.
I agreed with everything you said up until “he’ll be convicted”.
Not a snowflake’s chance in hell unless the DSA metaphorically push the doddering old guard down the stairs.
In law school we skipped border search cases because the border crosser cases can basically be summed up with “you have no right to privacy at the border.” This has been the common law for 5000 years. It has nothing to do with Trump, or cell phones, or anything other than the notion that a sovereign has an absolute right to know what is crossing its borders.
English Common Law hasn't existed for 5,000 years, which is what the American judicial system is based on.
unclear as to where you got this number
Not OP but generally states are considered to be a central political organization that maintains a monopoly on violence within a defined area.
The border is the thing that makes the state and have been since states first emerged about 5,000 years ago. If the state cannot preserve its border it is no longer a state.
edit: deleted because political flamewar
Say whatever you want, just don't say it on social media or border control might not let you enter the country the next time
Border control can't stop you from entering the country. Please do not spread misinformation.
If you mean non-citizens? Well, I invite you to check out many other places all across the world who also pick and choose who they will allow to visit.
i remember when hacker news was full of hackers. that persona is dead now.
It’s always been tech bros and wanna be tech bros.
It's been this way in the UK for years now. Always interesting to hear how far the rest of the West the US is.
If you come to the UK the police are allowed to stop you without suspicion and force you to answer their questions honestly or be charged with a crime for remaining silent or lying. You must also give them access to all of your devices if asked, or again face criminal charges.
Most people here are okay with it though. Ultimately if you're not doing anything wrong you'll probably be okay.
> I'm so very sorry, but the best you can do from here is speedrun the collapse.
This is a pretty silly take. If you actually follow the news, all of these issues are getting pushback. It's not at all clear that even a competent fascist-leaning government would be able to push through what the current one is trying to do, and sadly for them, competence in their ranks is in short supply.
The bigger issue has nothing to do with the faddish concerns of the current government. The era we should be looking to is not East Germany/late Soviet - it's more like the Gilded Age. Robber barons need to be dealt with from time to time.
We should probably be thankful that this crew is so incompetent. They could far more lasting damage if they had a clue.
>Those things are of the past now, for the US.
It's a temporary situation, it isn't necessarily a permanent situation.
Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days.
And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote. Things are likely to change by the end of this year, and in another 2 years we could have a very different government that could undo a lot of the bullshit going on right now.
Tens of millions have voted for this 3 times in the past 10 years, it succeeded twice. This is not going away, half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule and will do anything to take the whole country with them.
I think if I lived in a truly authoritarian country I'd be a bit taken aback to have my situation equated to that of Americans'.
Yes Americans do not understand how lucky they are.
Republicans are in every way trying to turn this into an authoritarian hellhole. "Cruelty is the point" is a phrase used with regards to right-wing politics in America. We're heading in the worst direction possible, but it takes a bit longer and more work to get a country the size of America with different states to become fully authoritarian. It doesn't happen overnight like it can in small countries.
Only because you think authoritarian means poor.
Voter preferences can change with time, as voters observe the effects of their previous selections. Most voters don't want and didn't vote for authoritarian rule. They are humans with many diverse challenges & concerns in their lives. Their votes are an attempt to balance/compromise among those.
Yet after Jan 6th more people voted or Trump than voted for the Harris
The US wanted this.
Only a small part, maybe 1/3 of the US wanted this. Not the whole population. Sadly 1/3 of eligible voters don't vote - they are the ones who didn't want this but don't have enough sense to vote, and that's different than wanting trump.
Voters change their mind all the time. Sure, there are still plenty in the US who want all this, but Trump's approval ratings are at or near all-time lows, and at least some people who voted for him finally see his lies for what they are, and have regrets.
It's still worrying! His supporters still number lots of people who a) are still somehow too gullible to realize Trump and the MAGA crowd are not going to make their lives better, and b) actively want what's going on. But there are easily more eligible voters in the US who wouldn't vote for a Republican with a gun to their head, or who are finally starting to understand that "sticking it to the libs" is hurting themselves.
It's not going away, but it's likely that it's declining, and possible it will continue to do so. Whether or not it declines quickly enough, before these jackasses consolidate power and break what's left of our institutions... well, that remains to be seen.
I take some solace for how there is such a hard floor of support for Trump. Counterintuitively, I consider that good news. Because any regular politician would be so far underwater at this point that they might well fear for their life. What Trump has is a solid 1/3 of the population that are so far up his ass they can't see daylight. That works out great for him, and poorly for every other GOP politician. He's achieved demagogue status, which is easier said than done. Vance ain't got it, Rubio ain't got it, there's not really anybody on the sidelines who looks like they may have it either. So when Trump is gone, the GOP is going to undergo another wild gyration in ideology after the infighting settles down. And if they don't find another halfway plausible demagogue, they might be a back into minority party status for the next two decades. There is precedent for this.
But the dems are almost certainly getting ready for their own come to jesus moment, their base is pretty pissed off too. Could get interesting. A boring candidate will probably be the preferred choice after the chaos of these years, but after that I think it might get wild.
You can rage against Trump and republicans as much as you want but in the end the democrats must learn to formulate why anybody should vote FOR them. Even in the current chaos they aren’t able to bring up a coherent message and follow through when they are in power. I see the same in Germany. AfD is getting stronger while the established parties get nothing done.
It reminds me somewhat of the state of the Weimar Republic. The democratic parties failed which gave an opening to the nazis.
Somehow, no one votes for nazi because they believe that stuff. Rhetorically. They are always victims with no agency.
They do believe in stuff. And their soft supporters succesfully manage to turm the blame to others.
Trump situation is result of years of hard work of heritage foundation, conservative preachers, tech bros, supreme court and so on. He represents their project being succesfull.
It's both. Why did the Nazis win ethe election instead of the liberals? Two reasons play equal part. One, many people are Nazis. Two, liberals didn't give any reason to vote for them, except for "we're not Nazis" and people who've voted on that basis for the last six elections and continued to see life get worse are now fed up - at best they don't vote and at worst they switch to voting Nazi.
The US is not the first country to fall into this trap. The exact same happened in Germany. The non-Nazi party offered nothing to anyone besides not being Nazi.
Liberals gave plenty of reasons to vote for them. But, those reasons did not mattered, because none of that was about what democratic party actually do. And also importantly, the difference between the parties was actually small. The narrative of nazi winning a lot is false.
The reasons for Trump vote were conservatives enflamed panic about trans and wish to harm them. It was hate of non-white immigrants.
And above all, it was vote for male supremacy. It was based on lies and wish to enact harm and cruelty. Openly so.
If you want to win next time, you need to stop closing eyes from that. Stop idealizing and projecting motivations on republican voters. Stop whitewashing them and listen to what they are saying and when.
The Democratic party started, fought, and lost a culture war almost before Republicans even responded. They alienated their voters. Heritage Foundation didn't need to do anything. And fringe groups got more ammo.
I don't even think Trump was the Republicans' best shot, only popular enough to beat Clinton and Harris (and lose to Biden), and probably tanking his party now.
That is a lie. Republicans did not responded. They were inflaming it again and again and again and again.
And always were.
You don't give Trump enough credit. It is about him personally, this is not the big win for the heritage foundation that you portray it as.
>half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule
That's half the people who showed up to vote, not "half the voting population". 1/3 of the eligible voters simply didn't vote, and from the people I've encountered that don't vote, they are mostly left-leaning.
No, stupidity and self-harm aren't going away, those are human traits. The current admin is actively hurting everyone, with tariffs and stupid wars he campaigned that he wouldn't start, ICE in every city everywhere causing chaos even to right-wing supporter-owned businesses (they wanted immigration reform but not like that!). This admin has shit the bed, and even his supporters are feeling that. They are now in the "finding out" phase, and the next phase doesn't look so good for republicans in the next election because of it.
Yep if Kent State happened today half of America would be cheering.
A third of America was cheering back then. The attitudes that brought us Trumpism go back many generations.
Does anyone on the other side have a credible plan to undo the damage?
Where's the Project 2028 book?
Is there anyone credible putting together the Executive Orders to undo the stack of shit, is anyone putting together a short list of District Attorneys to interview on January 21, etc?
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstruction-papers/ is explicitly aiming to be a Project 2028 book for the left.
That's the thing that worries me. The Democratic party just doesn't have their shit together in that way. They absolutely should be developing this sort of plan. I expect there is some plan, but I doubt it's as comprehensive or in-depth as Project 2025. And it needs to be.
On a long enough timeline, nothing is permanent. The question is how long it lasts and how bad it gets before it gets better.
In terms of the ending, East Germany was nearly an ideal case. The state just sort of gently fell over. The country got absorbed into a friendly neighbor. There wasn't much loss of life, no widespread destruction.
Then there's East Germany's predecessor state, which ended because it decided to wage war on half the world, and its people bore the consequences. Millions dead, cities wrecked, occupation by foreign armies, the country carved up. "This too shall pass" isn't always a good thing.
Or look at the state that created and sustained East Germany. Borne out of violent revolution, decades of repression, collapse, turmoil, economic hardship, brief flirtation with democracy, de facto dictatorship, no end in sight.
My biggest worry with the US right now isn't the government itself. It's that so many people want this government. Voting doesn't help when the voters want the bad stuff. We could have a very different government in another two years if the people want it. I'm not convinced they do. If they do I'm not convinced that sentiment will last. We already went through this once, and the "actually, let's not give the shitheads power" sentiment fell apart by the next election.
The people want this administration and their right-wing politics gone, and the right-wing knows it - if the people really wanted the current shitstorm to continue the right-wing wouldn't be so desperate to suppress the vote, gerrymander like madmen, and use every questionable lever to prevent people to vote like trying to extinguish all mail-in voting, etc.
I'm sure a big group of people want that, but I wouldn't call it "the people" when the president has a ~38% approval rating. That's low enough to lose an election but still way too high for me to be comfortable with it. And "the people" have extremely short memories, as we saw last time around.
> Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days.
> And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote.
so then you admit the outcome here is contingent/conditional. do you understand that means we are already in dire circumstances if the outcome isn't certain?
You don't need to go to other countries to play your fears, lest we forget our constitution is a pro-slavery document and one of the first acts of congress was the fugitive slave laws.
I think it's more effective to stick to our own history because this country has always been a struggle for workers outside of a small very respite after WW2 that has been actively fought against and weakened since.
I wonder if what might save him is he asked for a lawyer before giving the duress PIN, a lawyer might have told him it was a bad idea to do it.
The fact they violated his Miranda rights might get him out of the situation. But he surely should have just kept saying "lawyer" and nothing else.
I'd be surprised. Asking for a lawyer doesn't mean they can't use anything you voluntarily say or do after that against you.
Would he have been better off just refusing to give a code?
Yes. They'd probably have kept the device for a while, but he wouldn't be in legal trouble.
Not to sound like a contrarian, but no. They would have thrown it in a faraday bag, cloned the device, and then would use one of the many existing forensic tools available to crack the pin.
https://cellebrite.com/en/blog/the-access-gap-is-closed-what...
https://www.magnetforensics.com/graykey-for-android-devices/
That's crazy. Here in the UK border police can question you for any reason (no need for suspicion) and if you refuse to answer questions or give them access to your devices you'll be charged under terror legalisation.
Whats more crazy is that this is partially false: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/powers-and-operat...
Under normal circumstances, you don't have. BUT there is schedule 7 powers: https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/what-we-do/counter-te...
> Under Schedule 7, a police officer with the mandated accreditation does not need prior authority or suspicion to stop, question, search, or if necessary, detain someone. However, they may only stop and question a person for the purpose of allowing a determination of whether that person appears to be someone who is or who has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
How this is abused on the other hand, I presume, might depend on your skin shade.
Even if you are a citizen of the UK?
You’ll be charged, but will they be able to get a conviction?
The charges are the punishment. You are imprisoned, risk losing your career, risk losing reputation, and still have to hire a lawyer. The costs are incredibly asymmetric. This leads to the majority of people complying, which only emboldens the state.
The duress pin should not erase the device, just unlock a spoof version of the device
Obstruction to what? Also thought this would be covered by the fourth and fifth amendment.
I don't know about you, but don't people use encryption to retain privacy? And are people still free to manage their personal information? Doesn't a duress PIN present that information in its intended form? I'm confused.
Next they'll be demanding the passwords to your dropbox and onedrive, because you "might have uploaded something from your phone before re-entering the country". Bet on it.
Goes to show that he should have made an LLM do it instead.
What about none citizens? Customs kicks you out or throws you into a camp first.
E: but seriously, what happens to non citizens. What happens if you bring a burner/wiped phone? I assume digit forensics can confirm it was pre wiped but what's topping them from alleged you wiped on US soil.
That famous phrase from the constitution, "all men are created equal, except the ones not born in America"
The original you're riffing on is from the Declaration of Independence (a purely rhetorical document), not the Constitution of a decade later.
The implicit "men born outside the US are not men" is arguable worse.
Apparently they can be women. /s
The constitution says it is written to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", actually.
So non-citizens should avoid visiting US. Got it
That has been the case for a long while. I used to travel a lot for work - Serbia, Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Australia, NZ, Qatar, Kuwait, Moldova - but the only unpleasantness I received at a border/intl airport was on landing in the US, twice; NY both times. Talk about rude and aggressive, for no reason at all. I'm from the UK, by the way.
My fondest border experience was many years ago when entering France; this was before the UK had joined the EU. (Our later exit was dumb, IMO.)
Anyhow, a youngish officer - probably mid-20s or so - examined my passport while asking questions, in perfect English. His voice was even and his demeanour calm and professional. Then he took a step back, closed my passport and put it in his pocket. A few seconds later, he started laughing and said: "The look on your face. Priceless. Welcome to Paris."
He really had me and I saluted him for that.
To anyone worried, it doesn't matter how many felonies you get -- you can still be president one day.
Embarrassing.
He's lucky they didn't ship him right off to the Dilley Detention Center
And you still believe you have more freedom than China and Russia.. *thumbs up emoji*
Well, yes. Imagine responding like this guy in Chinese border control, or even UK. The 1A, 4A, 5A mentioned here don't exist.
"wElL yEs, we're not completely fucked yet" - Saying that is how we got here
America didn't have an abrupt revolution like in China or Russia, just the collective populace willingly being complacent bitches for the last 26 years
Damn that's crazy
You mean the Chinese who use NK slave labor at their logging camps near the NK border? Is that the China that is more free?
SO you have an issue with prison labor? As an American?
Prison labor and slavery are two separate concepts. You’d never accuse the ancestors of a black person of being “prison laborers”.
What is happening in China is bona fide slavery and it’s telling that your response comes back almost like clockwork whenever it’s brought up on this or any website.
Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?
i think it's just that the American population is the last bunch who gives a damn about it, and the pockets of resistance still makes the news... the same happens mostly everywhere else, just without much complaints.
e.g. in Hungary the authorities treat it as a felony to possess an equipment that can record video or sound and it's not obvious when looking at it. 2-8 years in prison for mere posession, i.e. even if it's turned off in your backpack. random nonsense that if it can also make phone calls then it doesn't qualify (the above is the law paraphrased).
In Germany it's a crime to carry a laptop that has nmap installed.
Since there are zero devices that are released that don’t indicate recording, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to outlaw modification of recording equipment to hide recording.
You know, the same way we would be rightfully outraged if Apple was allowing applications to turn on the web cam without signaling to the user that the camera is engaged.
That’s all aside from the fact that Hungary was run by authoritarian minded people. But just as I think it should be illegal for cameras installed in glasses to work without an indicating light, I don’t see how this recording light situation you are describing is really such a highlight of Orban’s excesses.
right, it's just Hungary... in Germany you must ask for permission from the military to leave the country for more than 3 months.
Technology is becoming too significant an existential threat to all governments. IMO, this is the "animal lashing out when backed into a corner" stage of their arc. All of the bills are coming due and they're having to answer for them.
Stuff like this incident (plus the whole surveillance gambit) just being a reflex out of fear, desperate to stay in power just a little bit longer. The funny part is, in the lashing out, they're exposing themselves and their true nature to an extent that the old illusions are fading fast. I implore people to never forget: your government is comprised of other citizens who are exactly like you; they're neither special nor omnipotent. They're just collecting a paycheck under a title.
If memory serves, I think this is also suggested in the book The Fourth Turning but don't hold me to that.
> Technology is becoming too significant an existential threat to all governments. IMO, this is the "animal lashing out when backed into a corner" stage of their arc. All of the bills are coming due and they're having to answer for them.
Forgive my ignorance, but how is any of this true? Frontier LLM labs are practically begging governments to tell them how to act, the most profitable class of technology company is surveillance-focused (like Flock and Palantir) precisely because the government money is ubiquitous and unquestioning, and everyone else is "donating" money as fast as they can and getting blanket legal indemnification in return.
You're not being ignorant; it's a pretty abstract line of reasoning, I'll admit.
The logic (again, IMO) is that if large swaths of these governments can be superseded by AI itself—which they're abundantly aware of—then over time we'll see their size organically shrink (but I would anticipate that shrinking to be preceded by an explosive growth first—just like an animal will puff itself up as a defense mechanism).
The money to labs is another fear/panic move: fork over money to your destructor so that it's more benevolent towards your favor when it finally brings down the hammer—that's why they tried to assert dominance over Mythos, etc (appear strong when you're weak). That may sound crazy to someone technical, but realize, most of the people coming into contact with this stuff think it's fucking HAL 9000.
Assuming that foreign competition makes the frontier labs irrelevant (based on my own recent experiments w/ stuff like Kimi K3, this is increasingly likely) or at least, not worthy of current domestic investment levels, you'll see a pullback in the markets. The markets are the only gunpowder the current day government has for propping up their illusion. If that goes, psychologically, it will be impossible to convince most citizens short of direct violence that they need to remain in power much longer.
I'm not presenting this as a "tomorrow" or "ten years from now" shift. I'd guess this will be more on order of 30-50 years, stair stepped. And in the step down, I anticipate full bore authoritarian chaos as the candy and toys get taken away. Maybe even a dictator or two emerging in the places we'd least expect.
So, I would read this less as "reading my crystal ball" and more like "some internet guy's moderately schizophrenic read on the current state of chaos."
It's not just America. It's many countries.
UK is same.
I know surveillance is on par in the UK, but is the UK also building and populating massive detention centers where people are kept without due process*? Are they flooding the streets of liberal cities with soldiers*? Killing citizens on the streets of liberal states (Minnesota) out in the open? Has nationalism completely overtaken the government and citizenship? Has the opposition party been completely neutered? Does your leader openly break any laws of their choosing while plundering national coffers?
*https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-family-120-days-...
*https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/08/20/...
I'm not sure if surveillance is on a par in the UK anymore. ANPR (police run license plate recognition system that scoops up all plates that pass) was a big point of contention during 90s and 00s, but even that has been superseded by Flock (private collection, no major legal safeguards, AI based constant review rather than human review etc).
Not yet, but Elon Musk is doing his best to get similar types elected in UK.
Law enforcement are underpaid, overworked, and they aren't even respected anymore. A lot are fine, but a lot of people are ending up there because they can't get any other job [1]. I don't think these attacks on freedom are always malicious, I think a lot of it is people in law enforcement who aren't capable of understanding the not-so-subtle difference between "law enforcement" and "law authority".
[1] - See stories from 20 years ago about people being turned away from law enforcement roles for having "too high an IQ". Or recent stories (such as one I heard on the podcast of a former FBI agent) about new recruits who can't read.
So far as I can tell --- and someone challenged me on this recently, saying they'd been in court over a case related to it, so take this with a small grain of salt --- this "too high IQ" thing happened once, in New London CT, and if that's really the only documented case you have to wonder whether it wasn't just New London making an excuse for why they didn't hire someone they just didn't like the vibes of. I can say with assurance that there's no "IQ cap" in cop hiring around here; there's a standardized assessment, and there's no score cap on it.
I wince at the disrespect shown to the profession on message board threads (in part because it feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and in part because it's so clear that the people expressing that disrespect would be less happy if they couldn't make these arguments --- i.e., they want policing to be bad), but normal people love police. Our resident beat officer showed up at our block parties and was a minor celebrity.
The difference is that this guy gave a code that wiped the device while it was under investigation. That's obstruction.
If he wiped his phone before crossing the border, he would have been fine.
If he refused to give his password to the phone, he would have been held up for a bit and then he would have to leave his phone, but he would be fine. American citizens cannot be denied entry into the US.
The difference is that the phone was wiped while it was under investigation because of an instruction he gave the CBP. That was ill-advised because that is clearly obstruction. He didn't understand the law and now he's probably going to pay for it.
And I say this as someone who had a very bad experience at the border. A CBP accused me of not being the same person on my Green Card and I had to wait 15 mins for that to clear up even though there was nothing to dispute here, it was me. The CBP are fascists and it doesn't matter who is president, this was during Obama's presidency.
The difference is he bragged that he did so. Otherwise he'd have much better plausible deniability.
Sic semper tyrannus.
How does it work for China and Russia?
You unlock your phone or they unlock your jaw, then your fingers, then your knees, etc.
By the way, the telephone is property. No one shall tell me what to do with my property.
Incorrect.
So we're presumed guilty until proven otherwise (the presumption is, any data we delete must be illegal; couldn't possibly be nude selfies that the government has no right to see)
Yes. It's illegal to delete your nude selfies to preempt a government search
What I don't understand is if he just didn't give any password, he would have been fine. It's only because he gave him a duress pin that he's in trouble.
So, in both cases the government wouldn't have access to the contents of the phone
He was viciously interrogated for three hours before giving the duress cod.
And I'm not fixing the typo.
They might have a way to gain access anyway. That was that case where the FBI got the locked iPhone 5C of a San Bernardino shooter suspect. Apple refused to unlock it, so the FBI paid a hacking firm to do it. If there's no known vuln to get into a phone today, I wonder if they'd hold onto it in hopes that one shows up later.
Any phone besides GrapheneOS should be assumed to be hackable immediately and automatically with a device they have in their back office.
That suspect's iPhone 5C had a weak numeric passcode, so the only defense was hardware security limiting the number of attempts. Someone reverse-engineered that, wasn't a backdoor. I'm not sure how GrapheneOS differs from regular Android or iPhone on hardware security, but seems like it's basically the same. Need a secure passphrase to be truly safe.
In the first case they (the US govmnt) could hold him (the citizen) in contempt (in a cell) indefinitely.
18 months is, by precedent, the limit on contempt for refusal to decrypt[0], but this administration is happy to disregard any precedent that does not agree with them.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-...
Actually no, they are required to allow you to enter the country, but they will make it a hassle, to the point of dehydrating you and/or refusing bathroom access, and confiscate the device in the end and access is through other technical means.
That’s false. Maybe a few hours but that’s it. The CBP are expressly not allowed to deny citizens entry into the US.
Is that allowed? Can you refuse to give a pin when asked?
It's complicated.
> Courts have generally found that compelling individuals to provide their numeric or alphanumeric passcode is potentially testimonial under the Fifth Amendment, as it forces the defendant to reveal “the contents of his own mind.” In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum 670 F.3d at 1345; see also U.S. v. Apple MacPro Computer, 851 F.3d 238 (3d Cir. 2017). It is analogous to compelling production of the combination to a wall safe, which is testimonial, as opposed to surrendering the key to a strongbox, which is not. See Doe v. U.S., 487 U.S. 201, 220 (1988). However, even if a court finds that providing the passcode is “testimonial,” it may still fall under the “foregone conclusion” exception
https://www.nacdl.org/Content/Compelled-Decryption-Primer
In short, you can't be compelled to give up the code in a dragnet attempt to find evidence against you (e.g. a boarder guard can't riffle through your text messages to see if you might have done something illegal), but if it's already certain that particular evidence exists on the device as a result of other evidence, they may be able to compel you to give up your passcode.
Note though that the cases where this has come up are very few and far between, and there isn't a super clear overriding precedent to follow.
In general though, the best choice here is to say nothing at all and work with a lawyer to figure out how to proceed.
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/can-border-agen...
Would it be permissible to wipe your phone before going through customs to get back into the US? If they ask to search your already wiped phone, you aren’t destroying any evidence.
There are apparently problems with wipe/restore under GrapheneOS:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060780>
(From the HN GrapheneOS account about a month ago.)
It has an encrypted backup/restore system.
We were talking about an attacker taking an image of the SSD prior to it being wiped not helping them because information needed to derive the key encryption keys is gone from the secure element. It similarly doesn't help them to do a brute force on a server farm since they're rate limited by the secure element. It only allows 20 attempts and has rapidly increasing delays between those. There's also hardware bound key derivation but that only helps improve the strength of a decent password. The secure element rate limiting makes even a random 6 digit PIN highly insecure unless an attacker can exploit the secure element.
Thank you!
(Very much appreciate your active participation here.)
That link says you can't take a image of the disk prior to wiping.
OP is talking about just backing up what you need off-phone and then wiping it.
What problems are you referring to?
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49394193>
Yes. Of course it is permissible. It is your device. The wipe must have completed before arriving at the counter.
I wouldn't assume that to be the case. It's illegal under federal law to destroy evidence of a crime. Just what the government needs to do to show that you've destroyed evidence of a crime and not just the sexting you did with your girlfriend is a pretty murky area of law, from what I can tell.
I would not present a phone to customs that had clearly just been wiped.
You're speaking nonsense since there was no charge or warrant against him. There was no crime that was committed. People are free to use their phone for f sake. People who reason as poorly as you will lead to all remaining rights being lost.
The way he wiped it is legal for the same reason. It was an illegal search and he was under no obligation to preserve the data on his phone.
It's legal to refuse to provide a PIN/password in the US. He's a US citizen so they couldn't refuse him entry. If he wasn't then the result would be getting deported.
It likely would have been a much better decision to refuse to provide the PIN/password and rely on the encryption and device security instead. He could have done a reboot or shutdown in advance but even without that it would have done it automatically via the locked device auto-reboot timer. The secure element only allows 20 attempts for key derivation with rapidly growing delays between those. If he had a strong passphrase then even a secure element exploit wouldn't obtain the data protected by it.
Ah, I see where you've gone wrong. You're expecting to apply common sense and reason to the law.
That kind of thinking has landed a whole lot of people in prison.
You're losing track of the discussion which was about erasing data before arriving at the counter. In any event, if you're so willing to "bend over" to the man, please try not to take others down with you.
I did not, in fact, lose track of that point. I was merely pointing out it's not a solution. I'm sure the guy in the topic article thought he had things figured out, too.
You know how they say ignorance of the law is no excuse? That holds true even if the law seems unreasonable or incomprehensible.
Arguably good if you want to maximize the capability of the applied border control efforts, seems inevitable. It's a very intentional incentive.
One more reason to not go to the US
But what did Mr. Tunick had to hide tho im serious what did he have (illegal?) that he chose to delete it??
i dont think it was ideological....
i bring a new device just for traveling and wireguard rdp (iphone mirror) into my home desktop
Ah yes, if he was innocent he would have nothing to hide.
Would you care to post screenshots of your inboxes and browser history for the class?
99% of ppl would not hesitate than risk detainment
> Would you care to post screenshots of your inboxes and browser history for the class?
i would be since i dont have anything to hide, do you have anything to hide or find embarassing ? I don't maybe my credit score, a few porn sites and password resets to some dating sites. I don't really care if authorities see it because there's nothing remotely illegal involved.
Mr. Tunick does seem like had illegal activities to hide from the article it seems like he was part of some politically motivated group then to make it worse it seems like he folded under pressure and did reveal what he was hiding. This alone is the worst possible thing you either go all the way 1st amendment bare detention and hardship or jst use a non graphene device with nothing on it.
rn graphene is just asking to be detained just get a second device, you just look more guilty than necessary.
graphene is an excellent piece of software im just not convinced the people who are using it are aware of the heat it brings them.
also i can't help but suspect that anyone entering duress pin to wipe the device are innocent. if it was something embarrassing and nothing illegal theres no need to even install graphene.
i can't help but conclude people who are installing graphene are involved in illegal activities when i see the news
99% of people also have an email service that will turn over your entire inbox if required by law.
Don't think GrapheneOS suggests guilt, seeing how they're tracking everyone without a warrant and going after people for things that are very defensible under 1A. Also some people don't want to be subject to Googliness, that's fair. But duress code on top of that... I know the govt can't treat that as guilt, but I personally find it sus.
you really have to go out of your way to figure out how to install graphene and on top of that you have duress code and its pretty much painting a red target on yourself across borders
the authorities dont care about your edward snowden insired views on privacy, they already suspect you and you wipe your device before inspection then they have no choice but to treat you with suspicion
i think that if you were a real hardcore criminal, like a cartel boss,you would not even carry graphene on you, everything would be done through intermediaries who have a chain of people to take the fall.
Well wiping isn't just cause for suspicion, it's actually destroying evidence. He was charged with that, but they couldn't charge him with domestic terrorism. He also had the option to decline unlocking the phone.
Paywalled, but what is the actual charge? Is it some extremely generic "obstructing an investigation" one? The US is quite good about making court documents available on line, if someone can find it.
The article says he was charged with obstruction.
You can try this "gift link" to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/politics/samuel-tunick...
He is charged with obstruction, but under domestic terrorism (as defined by a national security presidential memorandum).
But republicans assured me that they wouldn't ever start throwing around domestic terrorism at democrats!
"In May 2022 the corporate offices of Brasfield & Gorrie in Birmingham, Alabama were vandalized, and the message "Drop Cop City Or Else" was spray-painted on the building."
"On March 5, 2023, dozens of people attacked the Cop City construction site with rocks and firebombs, destroying construction equipment."
I can kinda see why this is considered terrorism
The gift link shows only a fraction of the article text. Just stick to https://archive.is/SflVC.
Obstruction to what though?
Injustice ;)
Illegitimate abuse of border control power to restrict freedom of speech.
Knowingly providing a PIN that would erase evidence is going to get tough in court.
But the man was also hated by the cops because of his activism. They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up.
There is no duty to keep a copy of messages and private data on your phone for the FBI to peruse at its leisure. Quite the opposite, actually (according to the constitution).
It is pretty clear to me that law enforcement conspired to abuse a border crossing to effect basically an unconstitutional search ("fishing expedition"), which it would never have gotten a warrant for.
This is them being spiteful after that whole thing failed. Note how law enforcement basically admits this on the record. The whole thing is a disgrace; every decisionmaker involved in this should be sacked immediately.
Evidence of what?
Whatever they claimed they needed access for his phone to. Probably nothing serious that would be worth more than a fine, if anything. But now they've got him for deleting evidence, which is pretty bad.
> if anything
That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? If there was no suspicion whatsoever, hence no investigation, then he couldn’t possibly obstruct it.
There is no "evidence"; by any reasonable interpretation of that word there would have to be an actual accusation of crime for there to be evidence of one. This was a search predicated on literally no actual basis apart from "we have the right to search your device because we have ultimate power at border passings", essentially just a fishing expedition.
This also doesn't even get to the more important point: If you don't have the contents of the phone you have literally no evidence of a crime being committed, other than the one they invented post-facto: "Deleting data that could hypothetically be incriminating, not in any specific way but just generally, maybe".
How can they prove that? What if it was a glitch?
That shouldn't be too hard. Get someone from Google or someone with any tech knowledge to explain to the judge how phones normally work, what encryption keys are, the implications of wiping an encryption key, and then get someone to show the difference between entering a normal PIN wrong several times and entering the duress PIN. You just need to convince the jury (or judge, if there is no jury for whatever reason).
People have gone to jail or have been executed for less than a glitch. Theoretically a highly charged particle from space could've messed with exactly the right transistors exactly when entering the correct PIN and trigger the wipe process. There is no way to prove that didn't happen. But you don't need that kind of proof.
Right, the halting problem means one can hardly prove anything at all when it comes to software.
Sure buddy. And the uncertainty principle means you can't prove I was at the scene of the crime.
The fact phones don't usually wipe themselves will be plenty good for a judge.
Btw: Regardless of the above I support this guy's right to protect his private data from baseless and unreasonable searches. He should not be charged with a crime.
No, it means there is no general solution to the problem of proving software correct. You can prove if a specific program will halt or not given certain parameters. You cannot write an algorithm that will work to prove if any arbitrary program will halt.
Because he told them he did
> They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up
funny reading this (don't disagree) and then also reading on HN how China is "bad" this is some gestapo shit but not surprising that it is getting normalised ...
China is strictly worse than the USA when it comes to border controls. That doesn't mean the USA is good or acceptable in any way; these laws are part of the reason why I don't plan on visiting the country. The USA also has much worse laws on the books, like having to give the authorities your social media passwords to check if you're secretly a terrorist (though that doesn't apply to citizens).
Excessive border patrol power has been around in the USA for ages now, it's all part of the post-9/11 package. I don't think many Americans even know they live in a zone where the border police can do shit like this, even if they haven't left the country, as international airports are usually near big cities, and they have a wide border zone around them. This stuff only really makes it into the news when it happens to one of the "good guys".
FWIW the 100 mile airport border zone thing has been debunked, as the 100 mile zone by statute applies only to land and maritime borders. https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
China is indeed "bad" for the gestapo shit. The difference is that China's gestapo shit comes with benefits for the common man too, whereas in the US the gestapo shit only serves the inner circle at the top of the regime with zero benefits to 99% of the populace.
Kindly list here the most important 3 benefits "for the common man" that accompany "China's Gestapo shit".
Housing, jobs, general prosperity and low crime.
The right to work 996, obviously!
Here's a gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/politics/samuel-tunick...
Paywall/archive: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49387289>
I always bring two phones when I travel, sometimes more than two, mostly because I’m a mobile engineer so I need devices to test apps on, but also just in case of situation like this.
We can only hope that it eventually gets decided that there can be no such thing as destroying evidence before a judge has initiated the discovery phase of a proceeding, outside of any standing operational requirements like business records.
yikes
Well hopefully there’s a jury so this nonsense can get nullified
What about everyone does this at the border. Then what is normalized is deleting your encryption key while entering, they won’t prosecute everyone on their baseless prosecutions. Join in I say, there is no law being broken only scare tactics being applied to prevent this kind of thing. Normalize the act not the consequences.
amatuer... when you leave the us you bring a wiped phone, never bring your primary phone/laptop/camera/etc
While I think it's an abuse of power from a moral point of view - yes, that would be the expected legal outcome. Under any administration.
You can refuse to hand over access. You can't go torch evidence. Caught Ollie North as well.
Ok those who see no problem... Let's just for the sake of argument concede that you have never had any right to privacy while crossing the border and so there is no cause for outrage here. Guy did it to himself.
How was this different from deleting the same data the day before instead of on the spot?
The argument goes that the crime is essentially knowingly depriving the police of something they want.
The problem isn't that the phone was blank, it's that it wasn't blank, and then when the authorities wanted to look at it, and you caused it to be blank to thwart them.
Ok well all of those supposed key differentiating factors also apply the day before travelling.
You knew you would be crossing a border, and knew you might be searched there, and knew you would have no right to object or resist, and so as a direct response to that knowledge, took action to deprive those authorities of something you knew they might want, by wiping your phone the day before travelling and carrying no data with you into the zone of inhumanity.
This would probably still "work" today and might have worked for him this time, but that's just luck and progression. If more people do that and the jackboots start to identify it as the source of their inconvenience, what prevents them from declaring that illegal? It's all exactly the same argument.
All it needs is to become a more common practice, and then it gets a handy name like "pre-cleansing", and then you can be charged for the crime of pre-cleansing.
Maybe we should just make it illegal to own tech that you even have the power to delete yourself in the first place. If you want to wipe your device, you can't because it's not allowed to run custom software, and even if you simply physically destroy it, they at least know it happened (and where and when) from the loss of telemetry and they have the non optional cloud storage anyway.
Then we can charge people for destroying evidence by knowingly avoiding generating it in the first place. You are guilty of the crime of attempting to evade prosecution by not commiting a crime.
That's where we are already. The current case has exactly that same absurdity.
Anyone that is surprised by this or somehow thinks this is new clearly hasn't crossed the border a whole lot. I grew up in a city along the US/Canada border. You don't fuck around with US Customs (or Canadian) agents. My cousin (not always so friendly) pissed off a US Customs agent (in the 90s mind you) and they promptly took his car and disassembled much of it looking for non-existent drugs. When they put it back together it was never the same. Their job is to be suspicious, 99.999% of the time people are completely innocent. But let 1 bad person through and it's Customs' fault for whatever bad thing they do. Not an easy job. Not an excuse for how they can misbehave either.
Is it right? It makes no difference, Customs can make your life miserable, that's just the reality of it, always has been and it can't have gotten better in recent times.
You hate pedophilia? You are a terrorist. You hate those who burn down mosques and churches? You are a terrorist. You hate the 50 oligarchs that rule over us? You are a terrorist. If everyone is a terrorist nowadays, might as well act like one.
I left this comment 2 weeks ago on a youtube short on the subject:
"I have an opinion on the legal matter. But I think it's worth noting that destroying the data was a categoric strategic blunder by the defendant. If you don't destroy the data, but just don't provide the password, they might never be able to recover the data, perhaps with the exception of a multi million dollar cryptographic attack.
Destroying the data is a strategic mistake even if there's a mildly strong case that deleting the data is a crime, as it provides no benefit at the cost of increasing the risk of being sentenced for evidence tampering. I personally am not appealed by the grapheneOS thing, but I can't see any case were that feature would be beneficial, it sounds like a shitty technology."
To me this is evidence tampering, and again to me, it's a great law to have that evidence cannot be destroyed. But even if you argue that it's a bad law, and even if you argue that this was not evidence tampering, you have to concede that it IS the law and that it IS highly likely that courts will find it to be evidence tampering, finally that there is little value to destroying encrypted evidence. It's a categoric legally strategic mistake.
And GrapheneOS is a dumb product by consequence for this matter, unless you are like some high level spy whose security model is being tortured or dissapeared instead of being put to jail.
Isn't that an illegal law though? After all you are not required to aid in the prosecution against yourself, aka you don't have to incriminate yourself. So such a law means that the courts now ignore that law/amendment. Doesn't this make it illegal on this point alone?
Either way the USA needs to stop abusing its citizens. The people need to take back control over the court system. Way too much abuse is happening here. Land of the free no more.
Yet another case that will waste the court's time and money. All this is doing is keeping defense lawyers pocket's lined.
At this point, people should buy a burner phone when going to/from the US. In that phone only have a couple of phone numbers and that's it.
Oh, they may well give you bad time if your phone looks like a burner with too little content.
> Oh, they may well give you bad time if your phone looks like a burner with too little content.
Issuing 'burner phones' and laptops to staff visiting countries such as China or the USA is now SOP for many companies handling sensitive data, including mine.
Don't think this isn't unusual.
Exactly, these people making shit up about border crossings are either doing so in bad faith or haven’t done a lot of international business travel.
This is not... advice. But if anyone's actually going to do this, the method that's worked for me...
A couple weeks before your trip, factory reset whatever burner phone you're planning on using and swap your SIM card over. Install a few basic apps you wouldn't mind them looking through. Enable hotspot/tethering, and connect your other phone via Wi-Fi.
For a couple of weeks, use the burner as much as you can with what is available on it. When you're driving, us the maps app for GPS. Make and receive some calls, ignore some spam calls. Read the news. Get a few inane text messages conversations going, etc.
When you travel, leave your regular phone at home and take the burner. When it's searched at the border, it has enough activity to pass most initial smell tests. If asked, you dropped your other phone and didn't have time to get it fixed before your trip, this is one a friend lent you.
This has worked for me. Never _actually_ into anything illegal, but just apparently had a suspicious vibe about me or something because every time I crossed the border into or out of the country I was spending 4-5 hours getting searched. Didn't need someone going through my entire life going back decades every time--once was enough.
If you are a citizen it doesn’t matter. They have to let you in.
According to this admin due process is only for citizens, and since we’ve claimed you aren’t a citizen you have no due process to prove otherwise.
So what, don’t do anything to protect yourself because there’s no hope? Give up?
Believe it or not, due process still generally exists and most people still benefit from taking precautions to protect themselves. That’s not to imply that things are great or that we aren’t in a time of declining civil liberties.
Seriously, there is something wrong with privacy doomers.
Wouldn’t be the first time the US government grossly abused its own citizens and violated their rights
And yet this distant possibility doesn’t seem to happen very often to citizens, as long as we still have courts. Not that actual abuses should be trivialized.
This comes across as fearmongering to keep people from protecting themselves.
If you are a citizen like this person is then you can tell them to fuck off, they can keep the phone, and they have to let you in.
They have to let you in. Doesn't mean they have to let you roam the country freely. They can just send you to some form of detention.
They can hold you for a few hours while they investigate, but they can't just arbitrarily detain you without a legal basis.
That isn’t true. They can detain you briefly for questioning at the border, but if there is no crime then you will be released. Feel free to dig into historical court cases about border detention if you disagree.
If you get charged with a crime, things are very different.
Nope, no disagreement. I just see your take as very optimistic.
There is no court at the border. If the agent decides you're going to jail, you're going to jail. The decision may be reversed/corrected after, but it's still going to be a big, expensive problem for you and you _are_ going to be detained for a time.
Not to mention walking up with an empty phone and telling the agent to "fuck off" when they ask about it sure sounds eerily similar to the facts of the case in the linked article. I'd wager that's a good way to land an obstruction charge.
If the abuse is egregious, you have a decent chance of pro bono representation or a lawsuit payout. In any case, activism comes with personal risk, and part of activism is accepting that risk while attempting to protect others. (This person was an activist, and it’s likely that they wanted to confine the damage to themselves.)
For the second part, having an empty phone is not a crime, and being arrested for this would be a major scandal. The tech press and political outlets would be all over it. It’s generally a good idea to avoid directly antagonizing border guards, though.
> I'd wager that's a good way to land an obstruction charge.
What are you even on about? Having a blank phone is obstruction?
They won't unless you are already on "their list" My phone basically looks like a burner phone, I do not use social media, do not install apps, my iphone fits (with room to spare) all "apps" on a "single page." I just call and text from my phone and have a browser and maps and that is basically it.
Think it’s better to travel without a phone at all and buy one when arriving in the us? Problematic I guess with everything being digital
If you can, just avoid ever entering the US at all.
Years ago I chatted with a border guard from another country about their job (while they were not working). Not having a phone nowadays would be considered "strange" enough to flag you. If you're not a citizen of said country, it could even dramatically increase the odds of disallowing you entry. Often this would prevent you returning for a set number of years.
At the end of the day, it's always best to just not have anything "bad" on your devices. People have been caught up for all numbers of "innocent" reasons (pictures of their kids in the bathtub, ancient photos in their albums of themselves doing illegal things such as drugs or underage drinking, text messages or browser history disparaging politicians the border guard may support, porn in your history) that can give a border guard in a bad mood good reason to ruin your day.
I personally don't want my phone data hoovered in and analyzed or marked, even though I don't really have anything to hide. I don't care enough to do anything about it, but if I did I would probably have a second travel phone with a curated amount of data, apps, accounts, etc.
The last time I tried to do that on a trip to Germany, admittedly many years ago, I found I could not get phone service without a local address.
It has been standard practice for some time now in some European companies.
Also, you might accidentally drop your burner in the lake/ocean before you return. It happens!
I'm a bit mystified why anyone would bring an electronic device over an international border with anything that could be construed, fairly or not, as evidence of criminal behavior.
> At this point, people should buy a burner phone when going to/from the US.
At this point? This has been standard practice for a while now.
I don't agree with all this and this increasingly fascist regime but... this was the most predictable outcome. Consider these two scenarios.
1. You factory reset your phone before entering the US and give it to CBP blank. There's nothing to find;
2. You have a self-destruct PIN like this guy did and give it CBP so it destroys the phone's contents.
Tech people will say that these two things are functionally the same. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the law works. If you factory reset your phone first with the intention of restoring it after entry, that's completely fine (legally). You could've factory reset that for any reason. But as soon as an officer wants to search your phone, now you're engaging in evidence destruction (spoliation). The destruction to the phone's contents was done in response to an unfortunately lawful search.
Even if you don't want to factory reset your phone, you can probably just delete (or even log out) of key apps. They can still get messages but if you're so concerned about that, use WhatsApp or whatever.
None of this should be necessary but we are where we are. But whatever you do, don't use a self-destruct PIN if you don't want to be charged with a felon and likely to be found guilty.
A court has not yet determined whether the use of the duress PIN/password was legal. There's definitely no consensus among legal experts of it being illegal as you're portraying it. The US has strong legal protections against self-incrimination and unreasonable searches despite erosion of how much people's rights are respected.
A factory reset done in anticipation of a search is not as different from using a duress feature as you believe it is. Forensics software would have clearly identified the device was recently factory reset. It would provide another defense argument by arguing it was wiped for another reason, but whether that would be believed by a court is unknown. It would make a difference if there was a good argument about why it was done, but it isn't necessary for this to have been done instead for wiping the device to have been legal.
Once he was in the situation already, the best move was very likely refusing to provide the PIN/password indefinitely and only talking to them to demand access to lawyer. There are strong protections against data extraction and it's highly unlikely they would have been able to get the data from it. Refusing to provide a PIN/password is protected under the 5th amendment in the US and these rights do exist at the border. They can turn away a non-citizen but they can't refuse entry to an American citizen because they won't provide a PIN/password. They could waste a lot of his time but he'd get access to a lawyer and would get released. They could make a court case over demanding the PIN/password and they'd nearly certainly lose. He'd likely spend months or even years without getting back his phone of course.
If they had a video recording of him entering the PIN/password from somewhere, they could have used that to get the data. By using the duress PIN/password, he prevented it. It was probably not necessary to keep the data safe, but that's unknown.
With only a tiny bit of preparation time, rebooting or powering off the device would have gotten it into Before First Unlock state without the locked device auto-reboot timer needing to complete. In Before First Unlock state, a decent random 6 digit PIN is enough for the data stored protected with it to be highly secure without an extremely sophisticated secure element exploit. If the device had a strong passphrase, then no level of sophisticated exploits would recover that data.
> A factory reset done in anticipation of a search is not as different from using a duress feature as you believe it is. Forensics software would have clearly identified the device was recently factory reset. It would provide another defense argument by arguing it was wiped for another reason, but whether that would be believed by a court is unknown.
This is where machine-like personal consistency is deeply important to opsec. Not just for technical reasons, but for legal reasons also.
If you wipe your phone before every national border crossing and restore it after every border crossing as a part of your standard procedure for travel, it will be much harder for a prosecutor to argue that you have ever done so in anticipation of some particular search. If your employer's security policy mandates doing so, that is even more evidence against anticipating a specific search. If a large body of infosec/cybersecurity professionals advise a wipe/reset of your phone before any and all international travel, that is further evidence for defense.
Is there are legal difference between you entering the duress PIN and you giving the border control officers a PIN, which may be the duress PIN, and then they enter the PIN? Does that chance from you potentially destroying evidence, to the person entering the PIN destroying the evidence?
I used a very specific word for a very specific reason. That word was "spoliation". It is a legal word. It means destroying evidence but it means more than that.
If you're the subject of a lawful search and you destroy evidence rather than handing it over, that's spoliation. It has legal consequences. Courts are allowed to assume that whatever was destroyed was detrimental to you or your case. You can be charged with it as well. That's basically what happened here.
Consider this example: many companies have an email retention policy where emails will be automatically deleted after a period. I've heard of cases where this has been as little as 14 days. Typically though it's 1-5 years. One of the reasons companies do this is so discovery can't go and dredge up something really old in a lawsuit.
If this is a company policy then that's actually fine (ignoring any regulations or legislation tabout required retention).
Once you get subpoenaed you may get a hold on your email. The company is then required to retain it reagardless of this policy. If you then delete an email, that too is spoliation.
Do you see the difference? CBP can search your device. As soon as they request it, deleting the contents, regardless of what it contains is a crime. Wiping your phone before every border crossing as standard practice is not.
Spoliation requires a situation where a legal case is reasonably foreseeable. It's reasonable to ask exactly what that foreseeable legal case would be in this situation.
"We will jail if you don't comply" is questionable grounds. There has to be explicit suspicion of something specific. Otherwise it's a fishing expedition, and questionably lawful.
Do the TSA and CBP get more latitude? Yes, but only up to a point. And that point is constantly being challenged.
It is not the same as resisting a lawful search. That's more likely to be obstruction.
It also not the same as deleting evidence when you're on notice that a case against you is incoming. That is legally much more straightforward.
Of course the reality is this government DGAF about freedom or constitutional rights. It has already shot people in the streets in cold blood for no good reason.
So this is a risky move.
But... there's been significant judicial pushback against overreach.
Ultimately it's a constitutional issue, but different states have different policies and attitudes to that.
https://www.hornwright.com/civil-rights-law/illegal-search-s...
If the government wants you no amount of technical gotchas will prevent this.
They didn't get the data from his phone and will likely lose the case against him. They probably wanted data to go after other people and those people were protected against it.
It was likely unnecessary to use the duress PIN/password. He likely would have been better off simply refusing to provide the PIN/password. He could have rebooted or powered off the device before going through but even without that it would have automatically rebooted itself after 18 hours by default, or a lower time if he had configured one.
With a lot more preparation he could have done an encrypted backup, wiped the device and restored it later but that's very inconvenient.
Y'know, makes me wonder why Democrates didn't disband ICE and CBP when they had control over the Congress and the government. I mean, they knew those agencies would be used in precisely this way, yet did nothing anyhow.
Democrats built the blueprint for ICE's deportation program and architected the law that enabled it.
Clinton's IIRAIRA bill literally introduced expedited removal procedures and created the concept of 'administrative warrants', routinely used by CBP/ICE today.
Without the IIRAIRA, removal would be substantially harder.
IIRIRA was not a 'Clinton' bill. It was initially drafted by Lamar Smith (r) of Texas (HR 2202) and subsequently attached to an appropriations bill (HR 2610), and passed with a bipartisan veto-proof majority.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/2202
https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3610
It's easier than ever to check legal assertions before you post instead of posting incorrect information.
Huh? He signed it and evangelized it heavily, speaking about his strong support for the bill.
He said the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy". In the 1996 State of the Union he strongly condemned illegal immigration and touted a 50% increase in border controls, while pledging to use federal government contract steering power to punish businesses hiring them.
How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.
Some notable Democrats voted for the bill, too. Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden.
Huh yourself. I'm sure you understand what it means that it was introduced and cosponsored by >100 Republicans, and what a veto-proof majority means. It was passed just a couple months before an election, it was pretty natural that Clinton would go along with it to avoid being attacked as 'soft on crime'.
How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.
Sure...if you believe it's common for American presidents' signature legislation to be introduced by the opposition party and get 5-10x more support from them than his own party. It passed with 370 R to 37 D votes in the House and 84 to 15 in the Senate.
How does saying the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy" mean he had nothing to do with the bill and it was not his bill, despite evangelizing it repeatedly and signing the bill into law along with hundreds of Democrats?
That quote is damning, no?